Better For You
by toavoidconversation
Summary: Dramione, Post-War: Draco and Hermione are working on a difficult case of alleged magical medical negligence: a child caught fire during an operation at St Mungo's. The two have to deal with aggressive media, new magic, and the less-than-subtle fact that Ron's drinking is taking its toll on Hermione. Will Draco prove that he's better for her? Will they win the case?
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

Hermione looked down into her compact mirror, and gently pressed the skin under her left eye. The bruise may have been gone, hidden by magic, but the skin was still sore and tender. She caught her own gaze and sighed at how lifeless her eyes seemed now. She had tried so hard to keep her morale up, to go about her business as usual, to come to work, to sit at her desk in Department of Magical Law Enforcement, to…enforce some law, or whatever her job was these days. However, looking at her dull eyes and sunken face, she couldn't help but wonder if she was doing a good enough job.

She pressed the skin under her eye again.

"Accident..." She whispered to her reflection. She was sure it had been an accident. Ron was summoning (yet another) Firewhiskey bottle from the kitchen and she hadn't ducked in time before it hit her in the face.

It wasn't funny, but he had laughed and laughed as she quietly reached for her wand and healed the bruise with a spell she used all too often. It wasn't the first time she'd got in the way of Ron's Summoning spells.

 _It was an accident. Just like they're all accidents._

Ron wouldn't really let her be hurt, not on purpose, surely? The Ron that she had known for so long, had grown up with, had risked her life with…that Ron wouldn't want her to be hurt. That Ron had shouted and cursed and cried when Hermione was being tortured in Malfoy Manor. That Ron had cared about what mattered to her, eventually. That Ron had been jealous of any and all attention she had got from any other man. That Ron had proudly joined her and supported her at all of the events that they had been invited to as war heroes. That Ron had spoken so passionately to the journalists about how proud he was of her, and how comforted he'd been by her presence in the final battle.

Maybe That Ron and This Ron were no longer the same person.

She was abruptly pulled out of her thoughts by the door to her office bursting open.

"Granger, have you _seen_ these latest — bloody hell, you look like crap."

She rolled her eyes sardonically. "Good morning to you too, Malfoy."

Draco Malfoy had stopped in the doorway, a pile of parchment clutched to his chest. His eyebrows furrowed under the lazy flop of blonde hair on his head, and after a beat, he came fully into the room, closed the door and sat down in one of the spare chairs.

"Make yourself at home," Hermione murmured, out of habit more than anything. They had this conversation, or a variation of it, at least three times a week. After a year and a half of working with the Healers at St. Mungo's on Magical Healing Negligence cases, Draco Malfoy, now a fully qualified Healer, had become her liaison on all of the cases dealing with defending the hospital when magical healing procedures went wrong.

At first, it had been strange partnership, full of tension, working so closely with the man of the boy who had bullied her so ruthlessly at school, the man of the boy who watched her be tortured at the hands of his aunt. However, the death of Voldemort and the end of the war seemed to have lifted a physical and emotional burden from Malfoy's shoulders, and on the whole he was tolerable to work with. Sometimes he was even pleasant. Either way, he was inherently passionate about Healing, and just as passionate about making sure his colleagues were not wrongfully punished for doing their job when the outcome was less than desirable. The fact of the matter was simply that magic could not heal everything, even in a Healer's capable hands.

"No but seriously, Granger… what happened to your face?" Hermione jolted out of her reverie somewhat, her hand flying instinctively to the tender remains of her black eye.

"What?" She said, louder than necessarily. "Nothing, nothing's wrong with my face."

Malfoy leaned over her cluttered desk and peered closely at her. "You look different."

"You're imagining things," she croaked, feeling guilty and not knowing why.

"I try not to," Draco said lightly, still scrutinising her face. "I tend to imagine the stuff of nightmares."

Her wide-eyed, shocked expression at his frank admission quickly became a grimace of pain as he suddenly jabbed a thumb onto the bone beneath her previously bruised eye. "Ouch!"

Draco's face was suddenly thunderous. "Who gave you a black eye, Granger?"

Hermione was at an utter loss. "Wha—how—?"

"I'm a Healer, Granger, not an idiot. I know a botch-job touch up of a black eye when I see one." He gripped the wrist that she had rested on the desk. "Who did this?"

"A botch-job?" she spluttered. That was her best healing spell, and Hermione Granger never did a botch-job of anything.

Draco quirked an eyebrow. "If you'd done it properly, it wouldn't still hurt, you daft girl." She flushed, and attempted to cover up her embarrassment with indignation.

"Don't call me daft, Malfoy," she huffed, leaning back out of his reach and rolling her eyes. "I'm fine. What do you want?"

Still holding her gaze with a dubious stare, Draco evidently realised he was fighting a losing battle. For now. She could almost see him storing away their interaction away in a corner of his capable mind, saving it for another day. She would have to be on her guard; it was bad enough that he'd caught her out with the injury.

Malfoy now tossed some of his parchment onto her desk. "New case. It's not a nice one."

She sighed. She loved her job most days, but as much as she liked the majority of wizarding-kind, there were the odd few who were desperate to make a few Galleons, even if it meant discrediting the name of a very competent Healer.

She thought about the last few times Malfoy had told her it wasn't a "nice one". There was the case last month, when an old man claimed to have suffered "unmentionable swelling in his nether regions" after visiting the hospital to have a tooth removed, which they had lost. Healer Pennyweather had failed to note that the gentleman did not react well to Numbing Charms. The time before that, a young lady, recently accepting her own place at the Healing Academy, lost a little finger in the process of removing a cyst on the side of her hand. She had won that one, and St Mungo's had lost one of their best Healers, who had been suffering from the recent loss of her husband, and hadn't told her superiors that she was unable to hold a wand steady. That one in particular led to a particularly harrowing trial in the Wizengamot, and the poor Healer had to undergo some very humiliating psychiatric testing in the process.

So it was with a heavy heart and a heavy sigh that Hermione picked up this new wad of parchment. She cast her eyes over it for a few seconds, and felt Draco watch her as her expression transitioned from apprehensive, to shocked, to downright flabbergasted, and then the intrigued, curious look he knew all too well from their years at Hogwarts.

"What in the name of…" she breathed, gazing wide-eyed at Malfoy.

"I know," he said simply. "Told you it wasn't a nice one."

"You can say that again…a child was set on _fire_?"

That definitely put her problems into perspective.

* * *

"How was this even possible?" This situation had definitely perked Hermione up. Her eye didn't even hurt that much anymore now she had such an interesting, if confusing, case.

Draco sighed as he settled into his chair, knowing he was going to be sat in that office for a while.

"Okay, so we have Melinda Pillett. Lindi, to her friends. Ten years old, came to the hospital for a very advanced emergency procedure...had an accident in her mother's potions laboratory and ended up ingesting an unfinished potion that was essentially eight-five per cent bloodroot."

Hermione's hand flew to her mouth. Draco quirked an eyebrow. "I assume by that reaction, you know what bloodroot is?" He drawled.

"Bloodroot... a perennial flowering plant with delicate white petals and a yellow reproductive system. Bloodroot and its extracts kill animal cells, and is used as an ingredient for the Bloodroot Poison...ingesting that is inadvisable and most likely fatal!" She frowned as Malfoy rolled his eyes. "What?"

"Ever the little know-it-all, even after all this time," he smirked.

"Shut up."

Malfoy sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers arrogantly. "Fine."

There were a few moments of silence, in which Hermione glared at Malfoy, and he smirked at her in return. When the silence stretched on, and Hermione realised that he was going to take her words literally and not say another word, she reached over and swatted him with her quill.

"Stop being an arse, carry on explaining."

"So fickle! And eloquent. I always forget how much I love working with you, Granger."

Hermione said nothing, just looked at him pointedly and waited for him to continue.

"Fine, fine..." He eventually sighed. "Okay, so she got bloodroot in her system, and once her mother found her unconscious, approximately fifteen minutes later, she brought her straight to St. Mungo's. The Healers whisked her into a procedure room, and began prepping her for the Poison Specialists, who needed to essentially siphon every last drop of the poison off the walls of her digestive system. It was never going to be a quick procedure."

"I can imagine," Hermione murmured.

"Don't interrupt, Granger."

"Sorry."

"Anyway. The Healers -"

"Which ones?"

"What did I say, Granger? If you want me to tell you, you need to stop butting in. Healer Hardsmythe led the procedure, and he was accompanied by Trainee Healer Edgecombe."

"Wait...Marietta Edgecombe? The one from Hogwarts?"

Draco actually growled and Hermione was caught between a surprised gasp and a giggle. "I can't help but ask questions, Malfoy. It's not as though they're unhelpful questions."

"They're unhelpful to me, you keep upsetting my flow!" He huffed in response, to which Hermione rolled her eyes but said nothing. "But yes, Marietta Edgecombe. She finished her education abroad, and after the war, returned home and decided to train as a Healer. She's in her final two months of Training."

"Does she-" Hermione began, but decided quickly it wasn't worth the argument with Malfoy again, and closed her mouth.

"Thank Merlin, you're learning." Draco passed a piece of parchment across the desk. "Here's the medical report. Healer Hardsmythe offered Edgecombe the opportunity to perform the incision spell to open up Miss Pillett's abdomen to begin the procedure. But as soon as she touched her wand to the skin..."

"She set the girl on fire instead?" Hermione gasped. It all sounded too surreal.

"Wrong. The girl caught fire. That's an entirely different matter, I'm sure a lawyer like you can appreciate the distinction," Draco said firmly. Hermione nodded, slightly embarrassed at her assumption. Her job was to assess facts, and do her best to keep Healers out of the firing line, and yet here she was, jumping to conclusions that Marietta Edgecombe had set a girl on fire. It wasn't a mistake she would usually make. She decided to blame it on the last week of sleepless nights.

"What injuries did Miss Pillett sustain?" she asked, making her tone as professional as possible.

"Absolutely none," Draco replied. "She didn't get a single burn, despite being alight for a full five minutes and being immune to all extinguishing incantations."

" _What?"_ That didn't make any sense at all.

Draco nodded in agreement. "I know…bizarre, right? Actually, the only person who was injured was Trainee Healer Edgecombe, who sustained serious burns to her wand arm."

Hermione winced. Burns were easily treated, but only if you were willing to endure a day of pain as the burn paste did its job. There was no love lost between her and Marietta, but she still didn't like the sound of a burning arm, not to mention the shock of having a child set on fire in front of your very eyes.

"Did they manage to finish the procedure?" she asked, suddenly remembering the severity of Lindi Pillett's situation.

"They didn't even start," Draco grumbled. "The Healers couldn't get close enough to make the incision, let alone siphon the bloodroot."

"But…wasn't it urgent?"

"Very. Bloodroot only takes twelve hours to kill someone."

Hermione nodded gravely. "Poor Lindi. So now her parents are bringing an action for…what, exactly? Medical manslaughter?"

Draco frowned. "She's not dead, Granger."

"But —- You said—"

"I don't believe I ever mentioned such a thing, Granger," the blonde man sighed. "You really must learn to listen. Maybe if you stopped asking so many questions you'd actually hear people talk for a change."

"Maybe if you weren't insulting me every other sentence, we wouldn't have this lack of clarity," she huffed in response. "This happens _every time_. Now, just finish the rest of the case summary, or so help me Merlin…"

Draco smirked briefly before returning to his notes. "We — that is to say, the Senior Healers — performed a highly complex and risky set of spells, to…well, to freeze her body in time, I suppose is the best way to describe it."

" _What?!_ " Hermione had never even heard of that sort of magic, and Hermione Granger had heard of everything.

"Essentially, the Healers have stopped time for Lindi's body. She will continue to exist day after day, but her body will be in the same state, frozen. She's in a magically induced coma, and hopefully this means the bloodroot poison won't spread any more than it already has. Of course, this is a hugely risky process, and if any element of the spells isn't one hundred percent accurate…well. I'm sure you already know."

Hermione nodded. "The poison will continue to spread, and Lindi's frozen immune system will have even less of a chance of slowing it down."

"Exactly."

Hermione gave an involuntary shudder. It was quite a chilling prospect, and it was times like this she both loved and hated her job. Loved, because she learned about new types of magic that she could never have dreamed up, and hated because she knew that somewhere in St Mungo's lay a little girl and her terrified family, and Hermione had to cook up a way to tell them that it wasn't the Healers' fault that this was happening to them.

"So, what we have is an action against Healer Hardsmythe," Draco continued, "for magical incompetence."

Hermione nodded. She had expected as much. Melinda Pillet's parents were more likely to want to sue the Head Healer on the case, rather than the Trainee, as he was responsible for her actions in all aspects of her Healing training.

"I don't need to tell you, Granger, that if we lose this case..." Draco pulled a face of utter disgust. "It will end the career of not only a very senior, absolutely amazing and world renowned Healer, but also end the career of a very diligent Trainee Healer who hasn't even had the chance to get her career off the ground."

"Quite. Very undesirable."

Draco rolled his eyes. "That might be the understatement of the year, but yes."

"Well then," Hermione stood and pulled all of the parchment on the matter onto her chair before moving towards the door. "We'd better get started."

"About bloody time," Draco muttered, before following her out into the corridor.

* * *

A/N: So...I've started writing again! It's been a while, you know how life is. I'm not going to make this a super long A/N, I just wanted to say hello again...I was going to wait till I finished this story before I posted it, but I got too excited and just had to get it out there. Expect updates to be slow, but they will happen, and hopefully they won't be too short. I'm interested to see what you think, and if you have any suggestions or thoughts about where you think this story might go. So leave a review and let me know what you think!


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

Draco and Hermione sat in adjacent chairs, across from Hestia Jones, who headed up the Improper Use of Magic Office at the Ministry. In the six years or so that Hermione had known her, Madame Jones had flown up the ranks within the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and was widely regarded as the brightest witch of her generation as much as Hermione was coined the brightest witch of hers. It was evident why; only twelve years Hermione's senior, and yet she was responsible for the finding and convicting some of the greatest offenders of the last war, a task which eluded some of even the most experienced Aurors.

Hestia was offered the role of a Senior Auror, but after a gruelling five years in the aftermath of the war, she was ready for a new challenge, albeit in the same Department. Following her work on amending the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery, in which the strict and disproportionate punishments that had so often resulted in some very anxious underage wizards had been alleviated, and the International Confederation of Warlocks' Statute of Secrecy in an attempt to grow Wizard-Muggle relations, she was offered the job that gave her the office in which she now sat, observing Hermione and Malfoy across her huge mahogany desk.

"So," she began. "The Pillett case. What's the plan with this?"

Hermione glanced down at her quickly scribbled notes. "Well, we need to find out a number of things, which will mean interviewing all of the parties involved. I think I should conduct these interviews-"

Draco cleared his throat loudly, breaking Hermione's flow. "With all due respect, Granger, I think I should be involved in these too."

"Oh, I'm sorry Malfoy, I didn't realise you were qualified in Magical Law," Hermione snapped, as Malfoy scowled at her.

"I think, given the unique nature of the case," Madame Jones mused, "That Healer Malfoy should be present as an expert witness during your interviews with Healer Hardsmythe and Trainee Healer Edgecombe. As a…field liaison, as it were, to explain any terms with which you are unfamiliar, Miss Granger."

Hermione sighed. There was not very much with which she was unfamiliar especially after working with Healers for so long, but it was not her place to argue with her boss. As much as she could tolerate Malfoy most of the time, she'd have preferred to interview everyone by herself, as he could not seem to help but interrupt and insult her as often as possible.

"Fine," she conceded. "But I get to interview the claimants on my own."

Madame Jones nodded. "When the time comes for that, you may. But that will not be for some weeks."

* * *

As it happened, the opportunity for Hermione to talk to the Pilletts came sooner than she expected. As she returned from her meeting with Hestia Jones and Malfoy, she passed two people sat on chairs in the corridor. The woman looked pale and exhausted, her cropped blonde hair looking very lacklustre, and she clasped the hand of a muscular man who hunched over with his elbows resting on his thighs, so all Hermione could see was the top of his auburn head. Hermione gave the woman a tight smile and walked on to her office door. Her hand gripped the doorknob. Before she entered, she heard her name called from a few feet away. This in itself was not uncommon, except this time, it was her full name, and with a voice she didn't recognise.

"Hermione Granger?"

Hermione turned, realising that the words had come from the pale woman down the corridor. "Can I help you?"

"You're Hermione Granger, aren't you?" The woman pressed, standing and coming closer. Hermione gripped the door handle a little tighter but remained calm. She wondered what on earth this woman wanted with her.

"Yes. And you are…?"

"Miranda Pillett." The woman stuck her hand out to shake Hermione's, who took the hand automatically, frowning.

"Pillett?" she echoed, and the woman - Miranda - nodded, as the auburn-haired man stepped up to join them.

"You've heard about our case, haven't you? The lady at reception said this is your area of expertise," Miranda Pillett pressed, and Hermione suddenly made the connection, berating herself for taking so long.

"You're Lindi's parents?" she said, in a voice slightly higher than usual. They nodded.

"Andrew," the man introduced himself, shaking Hermione's hand too. "Can we talk to you for a minute?"

Hermione frowned some more. Whilst she was very keen to talk to Lindi Pillett's parents, to further her investigation, but there were procedures to follow. She couldn't just have a casual chat with them in the corridor outside her office!

"I-I'm not sure that's appropriate..." She stammered, her brain whirring as she tried to think of a way out of this predicament.

"Please," Miranda Pillett pressed. "We just wanted to find out what's going to happen."

"Surely you have your own legal team?" Hermione asked, confused.

Mrs. Pillett's red-rimmed eyes swam with tears. "We don't have one."

Hermione's mouth dropped open. "Excuse me?"

"They're too expensive," Andrew Pillett explained. "We're going to represent ourselves."

"But -" Hermione was lost for words. "But you're going to-" she broke off sharply before the last word tumbled out. Lose. They were going to lose. Even without all the details of the case, Hermione knew this would involve a long trial, with a lot of expert evidence. And the Pilletts were going to need the best lawyer they could find to keep up with the highly technical case. Not to mention, they were going through a very emotionally difficult time, and emotions and the courtroom did not mix well.

She suddenly remembered she hadn't finished her sentence. "You're going to do it all yourself?" She wasn't sure if she sounded natural, but it didn't matter. The Pilletts nodded.

"So we were just wondering how this whole thing would go," Mr Pillett continued. "The procedure. We were hoping you could just talk us through what we would have to do."

"You're the best at these cases, we've heard," Mrs Pillett reached out for Hermione's hand, and the lawyer felt a strange pain in her chest. She couldn't advise these people. She was on the other side. She needed to end this conversation, and quickly.

Instead, she heard herself saying, "Come in. We can have a quick chat about it."

* * *

Less than an hour later, Hermione was shaking hands with the Pilletts and seeing them out of her office. She shut the door after them and slumped down against it, head in her hands. Thinking back to the conversation she'd had, she could feel the day's events well and truly catching up with her.

Mr Pillett had stood behind his wife, who was sat in the chair recently vacated by Draco Malfoy. His hands rested gently on her shoulders, in what one could perceive to be a supportive gesture, although Hermione wasn't sure whether he was trying to support his wife or himself. Maybe a mixture of the two.

"I'm not really sure what you want of me, I'll be honest..." Hermione had begun, unsure of why she had allowed herself to end up in this position.

"We just wondered if you could give us some guidance about this whole situation, I suppose," Mr Pillett had told her. "I'm sure you can understand that this is a very…" he seemed to stumble for the word, "…difficult…time for us. Lindi was going to start Hogwarts, we just went with her to get her wand the day before..."

Hermione had felt her heart tighten. She could see the very visible pain on the Pillett's face and could only imagine what they were going through. She thought back to when she was eleven, and just about to start Hogwarts, and could remember all too well the excitement that came from finding out that she wasn't "abnormal", simply in the wrong world. The thrill of going to Diagon Alley, finding her wand, meeting so many fascinating people and anticipating her future at Hogwarts with nervous delight.

"Did she…did she ever show any extraordinary signs of being magical?" Hermione had asked, curiously. "More so than you might expect?" She thought fondly back to when she first displayed a hint of magic, at her cousin's wedding. Everyone had been very bemused to see the figures on the top of the three-tiered cake become animated, waltzing across the icing. Luckily, aside from her parents, no one had ever found out that she, an eight-year-old girl at the time, had been responsible for the display.

The Pilletts shook their heads. "We don't have to hide our magic at home," Mr Pillett explained. "Lindi has three older sisters, all of whom are magical, like us. She showed signs, like we all did...you know, levitating things, magically mending her own toys, turning her carrots into candy canes... the usual. But nothing to suggest that there was anything...wrong."

Hermione had felt herself being drawn in, sucked in by the mystery. Had Lindi performed some form of advanced magic on herself to prevent herself getting burned? Was that even possible for an experienced adult wizard under sedation, let alone a young girl? She suddenly brought herself up short, remembering that this was not an interview, and she couldn't probe the Pilletts for more information without some formalities. She had to end this now.

"I'm sorry for what you're going through, Mr Pillett," she had said with a respectful nod of her head. "But I'm going to have to be honest with you. I can't give you very much advice in this matter."

"Why not?" Mrs Pillett demanded. "We were told you are the very best! We don't have much to give but you could at least let us know what you think of our chances...we just want our little girl back."

Hermione took a deep breath, and, fixed the couple with her most sympathetic gaze. "I can't give you any advice...because I'm representing St Mungo's in the case." She couldn't watch as Mrs Pillett covered her face with her hands and began to cry in earnest. Mr Pillett leaned forward and wrapped his arms around his wife from behind, his chin resting on the top of her head, murmuring indecipherable words into her hair. Hermione could hardly look at them, a picture of heartbroken desperation before her. Yet, she rose from her seat and moved to crouch next to Mrs Pillett, taking her hands.

"I'm…"

"Don't say you're sorry," Mrs Pillett hiccuped. "You can't apologise for doing your job." She rose from her chair, and Hermione stood to meet her outstretched hand to shake. "Thank you for listening to us, Miss Granger. I'm sure we will meet again soon."

* * *

Hermione couldn't stop thinking about her encounter with the Pilletts her entire way home that evening. She'd decided to walk the short journey home from the Ministry rather than Apparate or Floo; the streets of Central London were relatively quiet at this time of night and it was a welcome opportunity to clear her head.

She thought about the new case, and tried to recall anything she night have read in all of her years that might explain how Lindi Pillett, an untrained young witch could catch fire, burning everyone but herself.

She thought about the Pillett family, and how they couldn't afford to even pay for a lawyer to help them in this bizarre and unique case.

She thought about the Weasleys, another family that struggled through hard times with barely a Galleon to rub together not so many years ago.

And she thought about the state Ron could be in when she got home that night.

She was passing the Leaky Cauldron when her thinking came to an abrupt stop and she was hit with a brainwave that could solve at least one of her many dilemmas. Turning around quickly, she made her way through the inconspicuous door into the pub.

In a stark contrast with the subdued London street, the Leaky Cauldron was alive with activity. Several people waved to Hermione as she made her way along the bar, where she was greeted by Gabriel Tate, a young bartender.

"Evenin', Miss Hermione," he said warmly. "Bit late for you, isn't it? Ministry workin' you 'ard again?"

Hermione half-shrugged. "A little."

"Can I get you anything?"

She shook her head. "No thank you, I'm just passing through tonight."

"Most things have closed up, this time o' night!"

"I know, I just need to…" she waved her hand vaguely in the direction of the entrance to Diagon Alley, and Gabriel wisely let the subject go.

"Well, have a good evenin', Miss Hermione," he said. "Cheerio!"

If Hermione had thought the London streets between the Ministry and her flat were quiet, they were nothing compared to the ghostly stillness of Diagon Alley, where she now stood. The usually heaving cobbled street was completely empty, and only the muted sound of the pub on the other side of the wall was a sign that Hermione had not found herself in the middle of an abandoned town.

A grey rat streaked across the alley and through a grate into Madam Malkin's shop.

As she suspected, there was only one shop window with lights in. She opened the door to the little building crammed between Eeylops Owl Emporium and Scribbulus Writing Instruments, causing the "Daily Prophet" sign to swing over her head.

"Hermione Granger! Long time no see!"

A man with greying hair looked up from the mound of papers in front of him, smiling when he saw Hermione by the door. At his indication, she stepped further into the room and greeted the man warmly.

"Barnabas," she said, hugging the man lightly. He looked at her shrewdly through his tiny circular spectacles, noting her Ministry robes.

"I assume you are not here to finally take me up on that job offer, eh?"

Hermione chuckled. Since spending a summer as an intern under Barnabas Cuffe at the Daily Prophet, the editor had been asking her to join them permanently, but Hermione had never wanted a career in journalism; Rita Skeeter had permanently ruined her impression of reporters, and besides, she wanted to do some good in her life. That said, under the keen eye of Barnabas Cuffe, the Prophet was well on its way to recovering the reputation it had lost under Ministry control. The man had a passion for following the Wizarding news and reporting it with integrity and insight, and it was with those wise and intelligent eyes that he watched her now.

"No, Barnabas, and I doubt I ever will, no matter how many times you ask," she replied.

Cuffe shrugged and said gruffly, "Well, we've filled the vacancy anyway. And they're five times better than you could ever be." Despite his words, the twinkle in his eye gave away the fact that he was just joking. "Now in all seriousness, what have I done to deserve this late-night visit from the one that got away?"

Hermione handed over a scrap of parchment, on which she had scribbled in the chilly courtyard at the back of the Leaky Cauldron.

"I need you to place this advertisement for me."

 **A/N - I know, I said updates would be regular, but this one was a hard one to churn out. I won't bore you with the rollercoaster of life I've been on these past few weeks, but hopefully you enjoyed this chapter enough to review!**


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Long after Ron had gone to bed in an intoxicated haze of what she assumed was cheap mead (judging by the bottles left in the kitchen dustbin), Hermione sat by the fire in her flat, flicking through the file of notes she had for the Pillett case. In everything she'd read in all her years as a witch-in-training and as a qualified Magical lawyer, she could not recall a single instance of a child, a young and inexperienced child at that, performing powerful and specific magic like that whilst unconscious.

In fact, the closest comparison Hermione could think of was of course Harry Potter, rebounding a Killing Curse when he was a year old. There were no conclusive theories as to how or why he was able to do that, and Harry himself barely remembered the incident. The closest thing to an answer they had ever gotten was from Dumbledore, who believed that love, an old form of magic, had protected Harry from certain death.

But Harry and Voldemort had been linked, hadn't they? There was the prophecy from the Department of Mysteries, there was Sybill Trelawney's predictions, there was the fact that Harry had contained a piece of Voldemort's splintered soul...and none of that could be said about Lindi Pillett and her relationship with the Healers who were trying to save her life.

She put down her files and wandered over to the floor-to-ceiling bookcase. It was supposed to be the one shared bookcase in the flat, but as anyone who knew Ron and Hermione might suspect, the share of ownership was rather skewed. She glossed over Ron's half-filled shelf, where a few Quidditch books and Auror textbooks lay next to _The Golden Trio: The Full and Unofficial Biography_ , and crouched down to pull out a heavy tome. Carrying _Modern Magical Maladies_ back to her seat by the fire, she tucked her legs up and began to flick through it. Maybe Lindi had another, undetected illness that had been flared up by the introduction of bloodroot to her system.

Some hours later, her fire was dwindling to rippling embers, and she was no closer to suspecting what might have happened at St Mungo's.

"You really shouldn't leave your Floo open, you know, Granger."

The book dropped from Hermione's fingers and she let out a small yelp. She'd been so absorbed in her book and her thoughts that she hadn't seen Draco Malfoy's head appear in her fire. Taking a deep breath to recover some of her dignity and trying to surreptitiously rub her tired eyes, she quirked an eyebrow.

"It isn't open. It's on a 'Friends and Colleagues' setting. You're the first person to test it, so thanks for that."

Floo-Draco matched her expression with an added smirk. "That doesn't exist. Floos are either open to everyone, or they're closed to all but those who live there. There's no in-between. Admit it, you just messed up and left it open. Don't be embarrassed, dear."

Now it was Hermione's turn to smirk. "It does exist. Call it a side-project of mine."

"What?"

"I'm developing a selective Floo system. I figured, if the network can recognise a resident of your household, why can't it recognise frequent callers, or people who may need to contact you quickly? So I'm experimenting. I thought it'd be useful to have a Floo that my work colleagues could use to contact me in an emergency."

She couldn't help but feel a little snatch of pride as she looked down at Malfoy's astounded expression, which he quickly tried to stifle. Ron hadn't even been mildly impressed when she told him about it.

"So I could just turn up at your place, unannounced, at any time of day or night, under the pretence of an emergency at work? Seems silly to me, Granger."

She rolled her eyes, wishing it didn't make her bristle so when Draco Malfoy called her "silly".

"Obviously not, Malfoy," she said coolly. "Colleagues can only do what you are doing now. Friends can come and go as they please, unless I close the Floo down." Her Floo experimentation was something on which she greatly prided herself. Once she'd ironed out the few flaws, she planned to present it to the Floo Network providers and see if she could get a guidance paper rolled out nationwide (or even globally, but Hermione didn't want to get ahead of herself).

"Impressive," Draco drawled as though he thought it was anything but. "Though I didn't stick my head in the fire just to have this delightful chat with you, thrilling as it has been."

"What do you want?"

"What have you got so far on Pillett?"

"Nothing substantive yet, annoyingly."

Draco sighed. "Well, you'll have to do better than that, Granger. We have a preliminary meeting with the Healers involved in the girl's surgery in...about eight hours."

"What?!" Hermione squawked. "Why wasn't I told sooner?"

"Because it didn't get finalised until about six this evening, and you obviously missed the owl."

Hermione narrowed her eyes. "Did you deliberately make sure I missed the owl when you ushered me out of the office at five-thirty, saying I worked too hard and needed my beauty sleep, despite how little it seemed to be working?"

"I spoke no word of a lie. And yet, here you are, not sleeping. Which explains the wild-troll-look you have about you." Draco's face was a mask of innocence, and despite her better nature, Hermione's lips twitched into a grin before she remembered that she was supposed to be annoyed with him.

"Well? Did you make sure I missed it?"

"Of course I didn't. I wasn't even expecting the meeting to be arranged for tomorrow."

"Hmm. Well I suppose I'll give you the benefit of the doubt."

"The lady is so merciful!" Draco struck a dramatic pose, and it looked so ridiculous with just his limbless head bobbing around in the fire, that Hermione simply had to laugh.

"You're such an idiot."

"Having fun, are we?" A voice came from the door behind Hermione. She turned and saw Ron in the doorway, the light from the hallway outside illuminating him eerily. She felt her amusement ebb away immediately.

"Ron," she said cautiously. "What are you doing awake?"

He shrugged. "I could hear voices," he said, not looking at Hermione and instead focussing intently on Draco Malfoy's bobbing head in the fire. "Then I realised you weren't in bed."

"I was -"

"Fooling around with Draco bloody Malfoy!" Ron exploded.

Draco frowned. "Er, Weasley-"

"You shut the hell up!" Ron jabbed a finger at the fire. "You're there, keeping my girl awake at all hours of the night-"

"She was awake anyway!" Draco yelled, but Ron wasn't listening.

Hermione watched the exchange with a sinking feeling in her stomach. She recognised the signs - Ron was on the brink of pure rage; she needed to get him to shut up, and fast, before he did something in front of Draco that she would regret.

"Come on," she said, walking over to him and wrapping an arm around his waist. "I lost track of the time, I'm sorry. I'll come to bed now."

It was as though she didn't even exist; Ron stepped closer to the fire.

"You leave her alone," he threatened. "She's not yours."

"She's not anyone's!" Draco exclaimed, trying to make eye contact with Hermione, who had now reached up to touch Ron's cheek.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." she crooned, hugging him tighter. "Come on, let's go to bed, you're tired..."

"Hermione?" Draco called from the fire. She turned back to look at his head, and saw something in his face, like he was trying to communicate without words. But she didn't know what he was trying to say. She just wanted to end this.

"Goodbye, Healer Malfoy," she said softly, and reaching for her wand which was on a nearby table, she closed the Floo, and Draco disappeared.

"Come on," she took Ron's hand. "Let's go to bed."

That night, as she lay next to Ron, his alcohol-tinged breath blowing over her in steady streams as he snored, she thought about Draco's face in the fire, and wondered what on earth his expression meant.

* * *

Almost a hundred miles away, Draco Malfoy stumbled out of his fireplace and into his study, having been forcibly pushed back to his manor by Hermione closing her Floo to all but herself and Weasley. Trying to regain some dignity (though for whom he did not know, for he was alone in the Manor), he walked over to a side table and poured himself a small glass of McCuskey's Finest Scotch. As he sipped, he couldn't help remembering Hermione's sad gaze as she closed the fire. What was she hiding? He already knew that she'd somehow got a black eye one evening. Had Weasley done that? Why was she protecting him?

He had so many questions, and none of them would be answered any time soon.

He sat at a large desk in the middle of the study, and pulled some academic articles on Healing towards him, though he suspected it would be to no end. If Hermione Granger, to whom Draco had always come second place in school, was unable to find an explanation for a child's spontaneous combustion, then he was unlikely to find anything either. That said, he was never one to back down from a challenge (except for that one time, in the Astronomy Tower with Dumbledore, but he didn't like to think about that one). So he would continue to look for the answers, and stay up all night if he had to.

"Imagine Granger's face when I tell her I have the answer..." he muttered to the empty room.

He was amused for a few short seconds, until the last mental image he had of Granger's face floated into his head. Something was definitely not right in that household. He'd seen Weasley in a temper, and if he took it out on Hermione...

...Except Hermione Granger was a smart woman. And she was a strong woman. She didn't take crape from anybody; he knew that first hand, having been on the receiving end of her anger (and her impressive right hook). So there was no way that she would be letting Ron Weasley, of all people, intimidate her or hurt her.

And yet, there was something in the way she kept apologising to Weasley, despite doing nothing at all wrong.

Draco was determined to find out what was going on there.

* * *

Hermione arrived at St Mungo's the next day with mere minutes to spare. It was not in her nature to be anything less than fifteen minutes early for an appointment, and yet as she left the Apparition zone and hurried to the fourth floor, she entered the meeting room at precisely one minute past nine.

She blamed herself entirely for being late. That morning, Ron had woken as she climbed out of bed, which in itself was a rarity.

"Hermione," he had called, and made a gesture for her to sit back down.

"I'm going to be late," she said softly, sitting all the same. She let him hold her hand and pull her closer; his hair was matted and his breath smelt sour, but his eyes had lost the alcohol haze and he looked at her intently.

"You know I love you, don't you?" he said hoarsely. She nodded. "I only said what I said last night because...well, it's for your own good that you don't hang around Malfoy. You understand that, don't you?"

"I work with him, Ron..." she had sighed. She knew that Ron had still not quite got over his rivalry with Draco at school, and she felt bad about the fact that he'd come face to face with him last night, but she couldn't just avoid Draco.

"Maybe you should just...stay home for a little while? Cut back your hours? Let someone else take your place and work with him."

She shook her head. "You know I can't do that."

Ron ran his hand through his hair, sighing loudly. "I'm just trying to look out for you, Hermione. I don't want you to get hurt by him."

"He won't hurt me."

"You don't know that. The only person you can trust to _never_ hurt you is me."

Hermione frowned. She remembered the Firewhiskey bottle sailing towards her. "You gave me a black eye the other day."

His eyes widened. "That was an accident! I called to you, I told you to mind out of the way..."

Did he? Hermione had not heard anything. But maybe he had called her. But then he had laughed...Hermione couldn't remember the occasion as clearly as she wanted to. Maybe Ron hadn't deliberately tried to hurt her at all. Maybe he was laughing at something else.

"I love you, Hermione. Every day that's all I do, is think about looking after you." He pulled her in for a hug, and Hermione tried to hug back with some sincerity.

"I have to go," she whispered.

This unexpected outpouring of emotion was precisely the reason why Hermione was running late that morning. And yet, if she hadn't spoken so loudly with Draco the night before...or hadn't let him Floo her at all, she wouldn't be running late at all.

"Nice of you to join us, Granger," Malfoy drawled as she entered, pushing her flyaway hair off of her face and attempted to compose herself. She ignored Draco and began to greet the Healers, shaking their hands one at a time.

"Healer Abraham Hardsmythe," the older man with the bright green eyes and scarce white hair said. "Pleasure to meet you." He gestured to the slight redhead next to him. "My protégée, Trainee Healer Marietta Edgecombe."

For the first time in a very long time, Hermione met the eyes of Marietta Edgecombe. She still had the sullen expression that Hermione had come to expect from her at school, but unlike at school, the acne and the resulting scars that Hermione had cursed her face with (indirectly; Marietta could have saved herself a lot of trouble had she been brave enough to keep the DA's secret) had disappeared.

It appeared as though Marietta had found the countercurse, and Hermione was glad. The countercurse was her own special creation, and was so much more than just a spell. If Marietta had managed to discover it, without any shortcuts, Hermione knew she wasn't the same person she'd known at Hogwarts.

She reached out a hand to Marietta. "Good to see you again, Healer Edgecombe."

"Ah, you know each other!" Healer Hardsmythe beamed, either choosing to ignore or not seeing the cold look in his Trainee's eyes as she held Hermione's hand for as short a time as possible.

"We've met," Marietta murmured.

Draco cleared his throat. "Anyway," he guided them all over to a large circular table at one end of the room. "We have a case to discuss."

* * *

"...And that's what happened," Marietta finished her story with an air of finality. Hermione finished writing her notes, marking a full-stop with a flourish. Marietta's narration of the story was much the same as the facts that Draco had given her on their first day on the case, and she was disappointed not to have any more insight. That said, at least thre was no evidence so far of the Healers having been negligent, so their case was still quite strong. Coming up with a good alternative explanation for the events would simply be the...well, the only metaphor she could think to use was "smoking gun", and really that wasn't particularly useful in a room full of magical folk. The phrase "smoking wand", the alternative to the Muggle weapon didn't really pack the same punch.

"Can you think of any reason why the fire might have happened?" Hermione pressed Marietta, who shrugged.

"We did everything correctly," she explained. "To my knowledge at least."

Healer Hardsmythe nodded vigourously. "We did everything exactly the same as we usually do. There was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, Miss Granger."

"Well then... can either of you think of a legitimate explanation as to how this happened? And by "this", I mean both the fire itself, and the fact that Lindi Pillett was in no way harmed?"

Both Healers shook their heads, and Draco Malfoy leaned toward them. "Have you ever heard of anything similar happening? Maybe not fire, but maybe some other subconcious reaction to magical surgery that doesn't injure the patient?"

"Never, in all my years as a Healer!" Hardsmythe exclaimed. "This was an extraordinary case, Healer Malfoy."

"Maybe..." Marietta suddenly piped up, and the rest of the room turned to look at her. "Maybe her age had something to do with it."

"She's an underage witch," Hermione said. "She's not old enough to be able to perform that sort of magic whilst sedated."

"That's not what I mean," Marietta said with an urgent look in her eyes. "Listen, when I was her age, before Hogwarts, I did all sorts of crazy magic."

"I think we all did," Hermione said, looking round at the group for thier confirmation.

"Good to see I'm not the only one you interrupt, Granger..." Malfoy muttered, gesturing to Marietta to continue, and pointedly ignoring Hermione's glare.

"Yes," the Trainee Healer was impatient now, and Hermione suspected that was more down to _who_ had interrupted her, more than the fact that she had been interrupted. "But if you thought about it now, you could probably recreate that magic legitimately, right?"

Hermione thought about it. She could definitely animate a figureine on top of a wedding cake to dance just like she did when she was eight, if she put her mind to it. "Of course I could," she said aloud.

Marietta looked more animated than Hermione had ever seen her. "But you couldn't set yourself alight and hurt everyone around you except yourself, could you?"

Hermione shook her head slowly. "I understand the theory...but I think it would be very risky magic to attempt."

"Exactly. Not even a grown wizard would attempt it. But Lindi could, don't you see?"

Hermione didn't see. She didn't like not seeing.

"Maybe Lindi's underage magic simply bubbled over," Marietta explained. "Without a wand, and without education, maybe the magic in her manifested itself like this instead."

"You think this is just a case of unintentional magic?" Hermione asked, dumbfounded. "Did _you_ set fire to people before your Hogwarts letter?"

Marietta gave Hermione a scathing look. "No, but -"

"There's no way this is a case of magic 'bubbling over'," Hermione scoffed.

"But-"

"It can't be!"

"But listen-"

"Granger. Shut your goddamn mouth and let her speak." Draco's voice was full of authority, and Hermione was stunned into silence. "I don't see you full of ideas, so pipe down, and see what she has to say."

Hermione bristled at the tone, but couldn't argue with the logic. Suddenly meek, she looked down at her notepad, a silent acquiesence to listen.

"I just thought... if we can't show that it's anything we did, maybe it was something _Lindi_ did," Marietta explained, largely to her mentor and Draco. "And since we can't work out what exactly she did, I can't see why it wasn't an overflow of magic. I read a case once about a child who grew up in a Muggle household, and was so scared of her magic that she kept it inside of her until one day it just exploded-"

"Like Ariana Dumbledore," Hermione muttered, more to herself than to the room, but Marietta nodded.

"Exactly like that."

"Except," Draco intervened, and Hermione knew what question he was about to ask, "Lindi grew up surrounded by magic. She knew what to expect, and she knew no-one would hurt her for doing magic. She was safe. And her mother said she'd performed unintensional magic before."

Marietta shrugged. "I don't have an answer to that."

Healer Hardsmythe suddlenly spoke up. "It's a plausible explanation," he said slwoly. "Maybe Lindi had a reason for bottling up her magic. And maybe, with her body being...under attack, as it were, the magic manifested itself in an exaggerated nature, considering how close she is to the cusp of witch-hood."

"Cusp of witch-hood?" Draco queried.

"Have you ever wondered why we start Hogwarts at age eleven?" Hardsmythe asked.

"Because at that age, magic is starting to fully manifest. You can get a good idea of the type of magic you'll be good at at that age. Any earlier and there's not enough magic to tell. Any later and it could be too late to train the magic." Hermione reeled off on autopilot.

"Precisely. So at that age, a young witch or wizard is at their most powerful." Hardsmythe explained, and Hermione could see in this moment why he had been truted with the task of mentoring the future generation of Healers. His tone was not patronising, but authoritative. "Their magic is the purest it will ever be, so it's not uncomon for it to overflow when put under pressure."

"Have there been any examples of this happening, while a child is undergoing a procedure?" Hermione asked keenly. "It would be really good to have a precedent."

Her heart dropped when Healer Hardsmythe shook his head. "Not that I know of. But that doesn't make it impossible."

 _Damn. There goes my precedent._

"It's somewhere to start, though," she conceded. "Can the overflow of magic be stopped by the freezing thing you did to save Lindi's life?"

Healer Hardsmythe gave a gentle shrug. "It's possible that, once we unfreeze her, the magic is just as explosive. But hopefully we will find a way to siphon the bloodroot from her system. We have only had a bloodroot poisoning incident in this hospital three times, Miss Granger," he continued earnestly. "And three times we have saved someone's life. I'd like to make that four successes."

Hermione could see the genuine look in the elderly Healer's eyes, and hoped, for his sake, that they could find a way to resolve this case with a happy ending.

"Could I see Lindi?" she asked suddenly, and the Healers nodded, standing up.

"I'll take you and Healer Malfoy to see her now," Marietta Edgecombe said, though looking at Draco rather than at Hermione.

* * *

Hermione hadn't know what she expected when going to see Lindi Pillett, but it wasn't this.

A slight, strawberry-blonde child was hanging, suspended in mid air in the centre of the small room. A light blue hazy bubble surrounded her, giving her pale skin an eerie pallor. Hermione shivered involuntarily. If Lindi had simply been laying in a bed as though sleeping, then it would have been easy to forget that her body was incubating a vicious poison, but this unnatural pose highlighted everything that was unusual about this situation.

"She's been in this state for a week now," Healer Hardsmythe explained. "We can't work out how we can perform the magic to expel the poison quickly without the same thing happening again. She won't survive a second Freezing."

"How much longer can she stay like this?" Hermione whispered, unsurprised to hear her voice crack a little.

"If the magic is doing what it should, indefinitely," the Healer said.

"But you can't know for sure?"

The Healer's voice was low and apologetic. "No."

Hermione couldn't look at the little girl anymore. It was not uncommon for her to feel emotionally connected to her cases, particularly when the claimant has been through a significant amount of trauma, but she had never dealt with aomerhing of this scale. She'd never had to look at a child who was frozen has the motion of time continued around her, as her future friends and schoolmates began the excitement of Hogwarts, while she lay in the air with a deadly poison in her veins.

She felt an arm wrap around her shoulders and guide her to the door. "Come on," Draco Malfoy said quietly. "Let's go."

She allowed herself to be led from the room.

* * *

 **A/N - Thanks for reading! You'll be pleased to know I've actually drafted a plot plan for the next 5 chapters or so, so HOPEFULLY that'll help me stay on track with the updates. However, I just started a job at a law firm in London, and they're working me hard...how about a few reviews to spur me on when the work makes me too tired to write? ;)**


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

Hermione was so engrossed in her notes that she didn't even notice her office door open and close until a steaming mug of coffee was placed down on the stack of parchment in front of her. Attached to the mug was a hand, and the hand was attached to the rest of Draco Malfoy's body.

"You don't have to say it, I know I'm a lifesaver," he said with a smirk as Hermione grabbed the mug with both hands and brought it to her mouth, making a groan somewhere between pleasure and pain as the hot liquid scalded her throat. "I have some Pepper-Up Potion in my bag for you later, because I know you forgot to sleep last night."

"Draco Malfoy, you are a lifesaver," she gushed, flashing him a smile, and Draco could see the fatigue lining her eyes. He grinned back, content with her reaction, and sat down in the opposite chair, which was surprisingly devoid of files.

"So," he said in a pleasant conversational tone, as though he was about to discuss the weather, "we should probably talk about what happened in your fire the other night."

Hermione set down her coffee, her smile faltering. "No, we probably shouldn't." She began scribbling profusely, ink splattering on her desk in her haste.

Draco sighed. "Granger."

"No."

"Granger..."

"You can leave now."

Draco, however, was determined. "I'm not leaving, Hermione. I get the impression that Weasley's temper that night was not a one-off. I also get the impression that he does not always treat you the way a gentleman should treat a lady."

Hermione had stopped scribbling, her quill hovering over her page, steadily dripping black ink onto her notes. She kept her head bowed, and Draco continued.

"I also think he was involved in giving you that black eye the other week. And I believe you are trying to protect him, for some bizarre reason."

Hermione still said nothing.

"Well?" Draco prompted. "Granger, what's going on?"

He watched as she took a deep breath, then looked him straight in the eye. "Nothing. I'm fine, and you need to mind your own business." Her voice was calm and unwavering, and Draco could see her inner Gryffindor shining through. And yet, there was something, just underneath that display of resilience, that Draco couldn't reach, but could see all too clearly. He was a master of manipulation and an excellent liar, and those traits gave him the advantage of seeing precisely when someone was not being honest.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. But you should know something." She was silent, and he took it as his permission to continue, with his eyes open wide in what he hoped showed sincerity. "I'm not going to stop asking you if you're okay. You can tell me you're fine as many times as you like, but I'm not going to stop asking until you tell me the truth."

The silence that fell between them felt heavy and oppressive. Draco wondered if anything he'd said had sunk in. He really wanted Granger to understand that whatever she was going through, she didn't have to deal with it alone. She might annoy him to Hogwarts and back a majority of the time, but over the past year and a half, she was one of the few people at work that he'd come to tolerate, and sometimes even enjoy working with. She was still the know-it-all he'd known at school, but she also was incredibly hardworking, good at her job, and for all of her moaning, didn't mind being around him. Which was more than could be said for a large proportion of the rest of the Ministry and St. Mungo's, who avoided eye contact with him as he walked down the corridors.

So yes, maybe he cared for her a little bit. Enough to want to do something if that idiot Weasley (who never really grew up after school) was doing something to make her unhappy. Even if she did have other friends to confide in, they too were linked to Weasley in some way, and Draco believed it would do Hermione some good to have a friend who wasn't in any way Ron Weasley's ally.

Hermione looked as though she was just about to say something when there was a knock at the door.

"Come in," she called hastily, sounding - relieved, perhaps? Draco didn't have much time to analyse her tone before the door opened and a stranger walked in. He didn't seem familiar to Hermione, either, as she stood up. "Can I help you?"

The tall man strode across the room, hand outstretched. "Miles Attwater," he said, and Hermione's face seemed to show that this didn't make anything much clearer. "And you're Hermione Granger."

"Yes," she confirmed. "I don't mean to be rude, but -"

"Brenswick and Sons," Miles Attwater boomed.

"Yes, I know who you are, Mr Attwater," Hermione said quickly, and Draco quirked an eyebrow, because he still didn't have a clue. Who on earth were Brenswick and Sons?

Attwater preened and straightened his tie unnecessarily. "My reputation precedes me, I see," he said with a conspiratorial wink. Draco already hated him. Smarmy git.

"Look, just tell us what the hell you're doing here, cut the banter already," he snapped, drawing Attwater's attention to him for the first time since entering the room.

"And you are...?" Attwater prompted, looking slightly disdainful.

"Healer Draco Malfoy. And we were in the middle of a meeting before you barged in here, so kindly tell us what in Merlin's name you're doing here, or you can barge yourself out of here."

Rather than be offended by Malfoy's outburst, Miles Attwater seemed almost flattered. "Healer Malfoy," he smirked reaching out to take Draco's hand. Draco kept his hands firmly placed in his lap. "It's a pleasure. I'm on the Pillett case."

"I'm sorry - what?" Hermione spluttered.

"Counsel for the claimant. I'm Miss Pillett's lawyer." He beamed round the room, igniring Hermione's dumbfounded expression and Draco's glare. "Just thought I'd drop in and introduce myself. I'm sure we will be seeing a lot more of each other!"

And with another wink at Hermione, he left the room.

"Well," Hermione said, after a pause, more to herself than to Malfoy. "That wasn't what I was expecting when I placed that advert."

Draco, who had been staring at the closed door with a mixture of shock and disgust, spun round to look at her. "What advert?"

"The one I placed in the Daily Prophet to get some legal representatives for the Pilletts," she said distractedly, as she retrned to her notes like Miles Attwater had never entrered the office, Draco's expression shifted to incredulity.

"You did _what_?" he exclaimed. "Granger, you can't-"

"I did it anonymously," she said off-handedly. "I'm not stupid. I just thought the Pilletts deserved a fighting chance. I didn't expect the nation's leading magical negligence prosecutor to pick it up, though."

"You-what?" The best-what?" Draco could only splutter incoherently, in a way that made him mourn for his own dignity. "Granger - you just made our case - _our own case_ \- so much harder to win! How could you?"

"I just didn't think it was fair to them," she said with a shrug. "But I'm surprised that Miles Attwater from Breswick and Sons, of all people, picked it up. Why do you think he did?"

Draco scoffed with disbelief. "I think you're missing the point." Didn't she get it? It wasn't about being fair, it was about winning the case and saving the careers of two very capable Healers. She had just enabled their opporsition to have access to the best legal help in the country. If it was hard to win before, it would be next to impossible now, without some kind of miracle. "You know what, whatever," he said, getting to his feet. "If you want to lose, go ahead and keep making it fair. But when we lose, and those Healers lose their jobs for no reason...that's on you."

He stormed out, leaving a bewildered Hermione in his wake.

* * *

That afternoon, long after her irritation at Draco (and indeed herself, in light of the consequences) all but forgotten, Hermione was once again jolted out of her work by the arrival of an object landing on her desk. This time it was a purple parchment plane with the Ministry seal on the side. There was no recognisable handwriting on the side, so Hermione unfolded it with curiosity, her eagerness dipping as she realised it was simply a memo from the Main Reception.

 _"Miss Granger,_

 _You have a visitor awaiting you in Reception. Miss Rita Skeeter has requested you meet with her in the Ministry Atrium at your earliest convenience._

 _Please destroy this memorandum after reading, in line with the Ministry of Magic Confidentiality Policies._

 _Kind Regards."_

Hermione frowned. What on earth did Rita Skeeter want with her after all these years?

She looked at her ever-increasing pile of notes and sighed. She was no closer to coming up with a defence, and could use a break. What could it hurt to go and see what Skeeter had to say for herself?

Standing and stretching her legs, which ached from being sat for so long, Hermione grabber her robes and headed down to the Atrium. She thought about the last time she met Rita Skeeter, blackmailing her into writing an article on Harry in the Quibbler. She knew that Skeeter had continued to write after that; indeed Hermione had once again featured in a Skeeter publication when the journalist had published " _Harry Potter: The Chosen Boy Who Lived - Twice"_ , the 'biography' which was one quarter true and three quarters absolute rubbish. According to that book, Hermione and Harry had spent their final two years at Hogwarts having a secret love affair, and most of the time they spent Horcrux-hunting had been a romantic getaway for the two of them. Defeating Voldemort was just a happy side-effect.

Since then, however, Hermione and Skeeter had not crossed paths at all, and the lawyer had no idea as to why she was suddenly of interest to the journalist with questionable morals after all this time.

Hermione didn't need to look too hard to spot Rita in the nearly empty Atrium. The curly green bob stood out amongst the subdued Ministry decoration. Rita, who had been looking closely at the golden statue of united magical creatures that stood as a proud centrepiece, heard Hermione's approach, turned around, and beamed.

"Hermione!" she greeted, as though they were old friends.

"Rita," Hermione replied evenly, nodding her head briefly. "What can I do for you?"

Rita's smile did not fade at Hermione's detached tine, though close up, Hermione could see that her smile was taking a lot of work to keep up at that level of radiance. "I heard through the grapevine that you were counsel on this bizarre case with the Healers setting the little girl on fire?"

Hermione frowned. "Allegedly." Then she internally kicked herself. Rule number one - don't engage with Rita Skeeter, or risk your words being twisted in unfathomable ways.

"Lovely! Let's talk about that." Rita was already digging in her bag, and Hermione caught a glimpse of a quill.

"No," she said firmly. "I'm not talking about any of it." She glared at the qui;; making its way out of the bag. "You can put that away."

"The nation needs to know, Miss Granger," Rita insisted.

"The nation will know when we are ready for the nation to know," Hermione put on her most assertive tone and began to turn away. Rita grabbed her wrist.

"Okay then!" she said cheerfully. "In that case, let's talk about how you. How have you found working with Draco Malfoy, a key opposition to your cause during the war?"

"Draco and I have been colleagues for some time," Hermione said, exasperated. "The war is behind us. Working with him now is no different to any other time I've worked with him." _Except we seem to argue a lot more, and he asks a lot more personal questions_ , she added in her head.

"Well, I hope it remains harmonious!" Rita beamed. "And how are things with Mr Weasley? Are you engaged yet? Are you feeling the pressure since your friend Harry Potter is married already?"

Hermione looked down and realised that Rita was still holding her arm. She wrenched her wrist free. "Goodbye, Rita."

And she walked away, feeling as though the entire meeting was a horrible mistake.

* * *

She was cold. That was the first thing she noticed. She tried to look around to see if she could get a blanket from somewhere, but couldn't move her head. It was as though there was a clamp around her skull, holding her firmly in one place.

In fairness, she wasn't sure she'd be able to see a blanket even if she could move her head. Wherever she was, it was pitch black.

 _Oh wait_ , she realised. _My eyes are closed_. How hadn't she realised that? She tried to open them, but they felt heavy, as though she was on the brink of exhaustion, too tired to hold her eyelids open. She started to panic, her heart beginning to pound rapidly. What was wrong with her? Why couldn't she move?

Then her entire body began to burn, underneath her skin unforgivingly, and Lindi Pillett couldn't even open her mouth to scream.

* * *

 **A/N: This took a little longer to get out than planned, but hopefully it's an enjoyable read! Please do let me know what you think, every review spurs me on to write more in both quantity and quality! x**


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

Draco hadn't seen Hermione, or even thought too much about the pending trial in almost five days, and it was more refreshing than he'd ever expected. Without the distraction of the case or Hermione's constant huffing about dead ends, he was able to focus on his day job, which people seemed to forget he had. He hadn't become a Healer just for the fun of Healing School (although his university years - and his encounters with the female Healing students - had been very...eventful).

He pulled a makeshift dressing from the arm of his current patient, a five year old girl who had fallen from her toy broomstick and given herself a rather nasty gash. As he revealed the bloody wound under the piece of hastily torn fabric, the girl sniffled and Draco sucked in some air through pursed lips. "Ooh, that looks sore," he murmured, tapping it with his wand to remove any dirt, and then once more to get rid of any potential infections. "Luckily for you, I'm one of the best Healers for toy broomstick injuries in this hospital." He flashed the girl's parents a reassuring grin, and saw them relax a little. They probably weren't too keen at the prospect of having Draco Malfoy tend to their vulnerable child.

 _Merlin forbid I imprint her with the Dark Mark_ , he mused with dry humour, dabbing some Dittany on the girl's arm and watching with satisfaction as the flesh began to knit together. It wasn't the first time he'd faced wary parents in his job. Some had even demanded to have different Healers, and Draco had come to accept that, no matter what he did, his reputation (or his family's reputation) from the War would always precede his skill and reputation as a very competent young Healer. In fact, given the choice, Draco was sure that some parents would prefer Harry Potter to heal their children, and the boy had no idea how to cure a paper cut, let alone anything more serious. In fact, it was purely down to luck (and probably Hermione Granger) that Potter had made it through the first twenty five years of his life, let alone his first year of fatherhood. Even if the Dark Lord hadn't been trying to kill him at every turn, Potter would probably have ended up severely hurting himself in a reckless Quidditch accident, or stabbing himself with a knife in Potions, or something equally as lame.

Draco had definitely not devoted a significant amount of his time thinking up ridiculous ways for Harry Potter to maim himself.

He smirked inwardly and conjured up a new dressing for his patient. The girl, who had stopped sniffling now, was watching Draco with interest, and focussed her wide blue eyes on Draco's grey ones. "Can I choose the bandage colour?"

"Of course, for being so brave," he smiled. "What colour? How about a nice pink?" The little girl screwed up her nose, and Draco lifted an eyebrow.

"You don't like pink?"

"Nuh-uh."

"But every little girl loves pink!" he said with a playful gasp, making the little girl giggle and shake her head.

"I don't, I don't!" she said in a singsong voice. "You're wro-ong, you're wro-ong."

Her parents looked as though they were going to interrupt and scold the child for her behaviour, but Draco shook his head at them to show it was okay. To their daughter, he grinned and replied, "Okay, you got me. Not all little girls like pink. What colour do you like?"

The girl thought for a few seconds, her head on one side. "Um...Lellow!"

"Evie, we talked about this..." the girl's mother chided gently. "What colour is it?"

The little girl screwed up her face in concentration. "Yellow!" she beamed at her mother.

"Yellow, you say?" Draco said and she nodded excitedly.

"Like a Hufflepuff!" she added, watching intently as Draco changed the colour of the dressing to a suitably vibrant sunflower yellow. "When I go Hogwarts, I wanna be a Hufflepuff like my mummy was, an' she said I would be a good Hufflepuff because I always look after people. A bit like a Healer, you look after people too, don't you Healer? Was you in Hufflepuff as well?"

Draco smiled, amused at the thought of he being part of the Hufflepuff alumni. "I wasn't," he said, wondering if he should elaborate, wondering what impressions the girl had of his old house. He decided to risk it. "I was in Slytherin." He set about finishing her dressing to avoid making eye contact with Evie's parents.

Evie was quiet for a few seconds before shrugging. "I guess Slytherins make good Healers too," she said, looking at her arm. "It don't even hurt no more!" She hopped off the stool and went to take her mother's hand. "Thank you, Healer!"

Draco gave the family a brief wave, called "get well soon!" to Evie and watched his door swing shut. The smile stayed on his lips as he proceeded to clean up his tools. How liberating it must be, he mused, to be that age and know what qualities you have to make you a good member of any house. How amazing that some children growing up in the wizarding world today hear the words "I was in Slytherin" and not react in the slightest. How nice to be so confident that, even when you're five years old, Hogwarts will still be standing, waiting for you to arrive when you finally turn eleven, without a cloud of war or worry (or Dementors) hovering over it. Heck, when Draco was at school, he wasn't even sure that he himself would make it through to the end alive. He almost didn't - he was one of the lucky ones to make it through with just a faded Dark Mark and the stuff of nightmares forever etched into his memory.

It truly was a different time now.

And while he wasn't proud of most of his past, he was proud to have witnessed the healing of the wizarding world. He was proud he didn't flee, exile himself out of guilt, as so many had. He was proud to have come through the other side, to make a life for himself and to have seen the world that people like Potter and Hermione had fought for.

Then he remembered that he and Hermione weren't talking, and that for people like Lindi Pillett the future was far less certain, and for the rest of the afternoon, he couldn't shake the sensation of something heavy pressing down on his chest.

* * *

It had been almost a week since Hermione had seen Draco. By society's standards, this was not too long, and indeed Hermione hadn't seen her actual friends, like Harry or Ginny, in much longer. And yet she found herself feeling slightly lost without their daily bickering. She couldn't describe it, the sense of loss as such, but she felt as though her brain was more sluggish without the constant stimulation from their verbal sparring and general snarkiness. And, she supposed, he was quite useful to have around when she was trying to work out what on earth had happened to Lindi Pillett.

But she wasn't about to admit that aloud.

To take her mind off it, Hermione did what Hermione did best, and threw herself into her work more than ever before. She was determined to show Draco, and Miles Attwater for that matter, what she was capable of, and win this case. If Hermione Granger could survive torture at the hands of Bellatrix Lestrange, humiliation at the hands of Rita Skeeter, certain death at the hands of Voldemort's Snatchers and a black eye at the hands of Ronald Weasley, she could handle a simple lawsuit.

And so, she read. And read. And read a bit more. She spoke to Healer after Healer to try and figure how in Merlin's name, Lindi managed to completely defy all of the laws of magic. She travelled up and down the country, meeting with the leading professor in Underage Magic, meeting with the second-best professor in Underage Magic, and even popping back to Hogwarts to chat with Madame Pomfrey over a cup of nettle tea, to see if she could get any further clarity on the matter.

"I've never heard the likes, my dear," mused the elderly matron, taking a contemplative sip of tea. "Fire is a very difficult area of magic, very few accomplished witches and wizards truly master control of fire past the basics."

"Why?"

"Well, have you ever encountered fire? It's an uncontrollable force of nature." the old woman said sagely.

Hermione thought about her last attempts to control fire, during the Battle of Hogwarts as they fled from the Room of Requirement, chased by Fiendfyre. Granted, that was a heavily cursed fire, but the point remained that even if a normal fire had been that large, she would have struggled to quell it. Fire was one of the few things on the planet which was not overpowered easily by magic or Muggle means. Rather like...a landslide, or a flood. Some things were easily manipulated by magic. Kitchen equipment. Knitting needles. Human emotions. And some things just didn't answer to magic. Like fire. Which did not make it any easier for her to understand how Lindi Pillett had manipulated fire to light and extinguish at her will, and not harm herself in any way. It made her wonder what else the girl could do.

Was it wrong that she was a bit jealous of the fact that an eleven year old could accomplish something Hermione Granger couldn't? Was it hugely inappropriate that Lindi was lying in a magically-induced coma, a deadly poison in her veins, and Hermione was wondering whether she was about to be demoted from her position as the brightest young witch of their age? Of course it was, she told herself sternly. And yet, as much as she had hated the pressure that had come of being known as "the clever one", she couldn't help thinking that she would miss the label once she inevitably lost it. Because one would have to be very clever to make fire bend to one's will. Very clever, to have learned it. And very powerful to have that much control over it. At eleven years of age.

"I'm sure you'll find the answer, dear." Hermione was jolted from her musing by Madam Pomfrey.

"Hmm? Oh...Oh well yes I hope so," she said distractedly. "Without it, we will find it very difficult to win this case and the Healers involved may well lose their jobs." She sighed, suddenly more frustrated than usual about the number of dead ends she had hit. This was turning out to be one hell of a case.

When she left the hospital wing later, she found herself walking the familiar corridors to the seventh floor, stopping in front of a portrait which held a painting of a large woman, who was engrossed in singing a rousing operatic number and did not see Hermione approach. A smile worked its way onto Hermione's mouth as she remembered how many times she had greeting this portrait as a student, and how many times she, Ron and Harry had had to beg her not to lecture them when they snuck out at night. She had often wondered what the Fat Lady did during the school holidays.

She sang, it seemed.

The Fat Lady seemed suddenly aware that she had an audience. "You're still here? My goodness girl, will you never get tired of this place?"

"Probably not," Hermione replied fondly. "May I go in?"

"There's no one here, you know," the portrait said haughtily. "Most people have homes to go to in the summer holidays." The jibe was not subtle, but the hidden door behind the portrait swung open nonetheless, allowing Hermione to step over the threshold and into the circular Gryffindor Common Room. She stood just beyond the doorway, barely noticing the portrait door swing shut just behind her as she absorbed the overwhelming sense of home that she had not felt in a very long time.

This castle had been the making of her as a lawyer, encouraging her to further her studies, follow her ambition and try new things, but this room had been the making of her as a person. This room was where she had made friends for life, where she had stayed up late studying, then stayed up late working out how to fight Umbridge's regime, and then stayed up late learning how to fight Voldemort himself. This room was where she'd written extensive letters to Viktor Krum, convinced he'd be her one true love, and the room where she'd wept at three o'clock in the morning on the day he broke her heart. This room was even where she had had her first kiss, if you count a hug and a peck on the cheek from George Weasley which accidentally caught her on the lips when she turned her face, after Gryffindor won a Quidditch match in her third year. She'd cast her first Full Body Bind in this room, plotted to brew Polyjuice Potion, knitted house-elf hats, and everything in between.

Now looking out of one of the many tall windows, she thought about how, all those years ago, she never could have anticipated that her life would be the way it was. At fifteen, she predicted she would dedicate her life to house-elf welfare, a venture which was rendered unnecessary by the time she turned twenty. At eighteen, she thought that Ronald Weasley was the man she was going to marry if they survived the war. At fourteen, she punched Draco Malfoy in the face, hard, and swore her everlasting hatred.

It truly was a different time now.

Hermione woke with a start, a few hours later, curled up in one of the armchairs by the fire in the common room. Her old favourite armchair, in fact. Wiping her eyes groggily, she saw that an owl had left an envelope in her lap, and was probably the source of her sudden awakening.

 _Hermione_ , it read.

 _Just a quick note to let you know that we are officially interviewing the Pillett family tomorrow at noon. I trust you will be prepared by then._

 _Hestia Jones_

Hermione settled back into the chair, relishing in its much-missed familiarity. Tomorrow they would get a full account of the situation from the Pilletts. She wasn't any closer to working out her defence, but maybe a flash of inspiration would come to her tomorrow.

The sky outside the Gryffindor Tower had grown a dusky pink, and Hermione was still curled up in the armchair, her parchment resting on the padded arm, and her wrist sore from the notes and questions she had written. She was almost surprised; it hadn't felt as though time was passing, holed up in her former safe space. It was quite uncommon for her to go for so long without any interruptions, and she felt her brain seem to unclog and relax as she worked. She read over her notes and smiled to herself. She was prepared.

* * *

 **A/N Thanks for reading! Please do let me know what you think...**


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

By one o'clock the next afternoon, however, Hermione did not feel like smiling. At all. As she marched from the interview room, her rage was so great that she did not even hear Rita Skeeter asking for a quote until Draco bellowed at her.

"Get the hell out of here, before I stick that quill where the sun doesn't shine!"

She spun round so quickly she almost lost her balance and grabbed his arm in a vice-like grip. "Shut the hell up. You've done enough damage," she growled, pulling them both into Hestia Jones's office and making her way to the nearest available seats. They sat in silence, pointedly avoiding each other's gaze, and waited for Hestia to arrive.

"Never," she said by way of announcing her entry to the room, "have I witnessed such a shambles of an interview and such an abuse of the litigation process!" She marched round her desk and sat down, fixing them with her cold, hard gaze. "What on earth happened in there?"

Malfoy opened his mouth to speak, but Hestia cut him off. " _You_ have done more than enough talking today." She turned to Hermione. "You. Go."

 _"So, Mr Pillett," Hermione began, shuffling the parchment on which she had written in the Gryffindor Common Room the day before. "How old was Lindi when she first displayed signs of magic?"_

 _Andrew Pillett looked like he hadn't slept in weeks. "I don't know, like I told you before -"_

 _"Anything you may have said previously wasn't on record, Mr Pillett," Hermione explained, her patience not dented in the slightest. "So there may be some repetition at times. So, please. How old was she?"_

 _Andrew sighed heavily, running a weary hand over his heavy stubble. "She was six, seven maybe."_

 _"And what did she do? Do you remember?"_

 _"It wasn't anything special...I don't...we don't really register it, I always knew she'd be magical...there was always something happening in our house with the kids' magic..."_

 _"She made it snow," Mrs Pillett spoke for the first time. "In our laundry room." Her voice was gravelly and hoarse, and Hermione got the impression that she hadn't used it much in the past few weeks. "I thought she'd just spilt the washing powder. But it was snow. Lindi was in the middle of it, looking completely d-delighted..." Her voice broke, and Mrs Pillett didn't speak for the rest of the session._

 _Hermione scratched a few notes. "After that, did Lindi perform magic regularly?"_

 _"No more than you might expect. She knew from her big sisters that you weren't meant to do magic until you went to Hogwarts. So she never did anything deliberately. She was so excited to go to school."_

 _"Did she ever set anything on fire?"_

 _"Never. Once she made her kite go when we told her it wasn't windy enough. She'd only ever done things like that. Nothing like fire. She's never destroyed anything like that. She never would!"_

 _"And yet..." to Hermione's left, Draco was rolling his eyes. Her foot found his under the desk and she stepped on it. Hard. To his credit, Draco didn't make a sound, but his hand clenched in his lap._

 _His mutterings didn't go unnoticed by Mr Pillett. "My daughter had NOTHING to do with what happened in that hospital!" he suddenly exploded, causing Hermione to gasp and Draco to quirk an eyebrow in surprise. "It was your useless Healers! They're hiding something, they're covering their own backs, they're-"_

 _"Mr Pillett, please-" Hermione pleaded, and Miles Attwater, who had been stood by the door, stepped forward and placed a large hand on his client's shoulder._

 _"My Healers did NOT do this!" Draco Malfoy was now standing, his palms rested on the table, his face thunderous. "Those Healers are the best goddamn Healers in the COUNTRY, don't you DARE disrespect them-"_

 _"Draco!" Hermione reached up to pull him back into his seat, but he yanked his arm out of her grasp._

 _"Let me tell you something," Draco snarled. "We are going to find out what happened in that hospital. And we are going to find out that those Healers did everything. They. Could," he slammed the table with his palm on every word, "Everything. To save your daughter. After YOU," here he pointed a slender finger at Mr & Mrs Pillett, "were irresponsible enough to let her get hurt in the first place."_

 _"Draco!" Hermione was shocked at how the situation had spiralled out of control. Wasn't there supposed to be a security wizard outside? Why had no one called him in?_

 _"And if it turns out that you taught her some magic to hurt those Healers-"_

 _"You'd know ALL about that type of magic, wouldn't you?" Andrew PIllett spat back._

 _"That is ENOUGH!" Hermione and Miles Attwater spoke in unison and the room went silent. Hermione stood up brusquely, grabbed Draco by the elbow and marched him to the door. Before she opened it, she turned back to the Pilletts, where Mr Pillett was rubbing his hand up and down his wife's back as she shuddered with tears. The fight in him seemed to have disappeared as abruptly as it hadarrived, and he appeared physically deflated, crumpled._

 _"I'm so sorry," she said quietly, and then dragged Draco from the room._

Hestia sat silently for so long that she could have been Petrified, but for the vein visibly throbbing in her temple. when she next spoke, it was quietly and deliberately, as though it was taking considerable effort not to shout.

"Mr Malfoy," she began in a clipped tone to rival Professor McGonagall at her most angry. "When we interview the opposing parties, it is our job to ask questions, and listen to the answers. It is _not_ our job to throw accusations-"

"He was the one throwing-"

"It is _not your job_ , Mr Malfoy." Hestia's voice rumbled with the authority of someone who should not be crossed by any means. Hermione felt herself shiver slightly, and the words were not even directed at her. "We will not -we _cannot_ \- allow ourselves to put our case, and our integrity at risk by being completely unprofessional. We are here to find the truth, not make accusations. Not to mention, a child's life is at stake here. Healers, people in the same profession as those which witnessed this terrible incident, are working tirelessly to save this child's life. It takes a lot of courage for the Pilletts to put their faith in st Mungos after all that has happened. We cannot make it any harder for them. We are simply trying to find out the truth, and hopefully we can show that our healers were as diligent as ever in carrying out their medical duties. Is that clear?"

Malfoy's face was sullen, but Hermione wasn't sure she saw any remorse on his face. He'd meant what he'd said, and she knew he had no intention of apologising for that.

"Yes, ma'am."

"You may leave, Healer Malfoy. Hermione, a word, please."

Draco didn't slam the door as he left, but everything about the way he held himself suggested that had he been leaving any room other than Hestia Jones' office, he might have done.

He was still outside the door when Hermione opened it ten minutes later having had her quick chat with Hestia. She was mulling over the afternoons events and almost tripped over Draco's outstretched feet from where he was sat on the floor, his back against the wall.

"Draco, what the-"

"I'm not going to apologise for what happened, Granger."

A crease appeared in Hermione's brow. "What?"

"I know you all expect me to apologise for what happened in there," his voice was monotone and he stared at the stone slabs on the floor, not looking up when Hermione slid down the wall to sit next to him. "I care about that kid, I do. That's why I want those parents to be more bloody cooperative! They _know_ something, Hermione-"

"You don't know that, Draco. Maybe they're as overwhelmed and confused as we are. All we can do is listen to them."

"I'm so tired of listening. I want to get answers. I want to save that girl's life. I want to save the careers of some of the best Healers I know."

Instinctively, Hermione rested her hand on top of Draco's. "I know."

Hermione lost track of how long they were sat there, the stone slabs sapping all of the heat through her robes and out of her body. A flash of light jolted her back into awareness of her surroundings.

" _There_ you are!" Chirped a familiar, but thoroughly unwelcome voice. Draco jumped up, Hermione's hand falling to the floor with a faint smack of skin against stone.

"Get out of here," he growled at Rita Skeeter, using the several inches of height he had over her to appear as threatening as possible. Rita, however, stood her ground. Her jaw tightened, causing her purple-smeared lips to stick out slightly in indignation.

"Mr Malfoy, I understand this trial isn't going in your favour?" she said coolly.

"I have nothing to say to you."

"Funny," Rita smirked, glancing sideways at where Hermione stood watching the encounter, ready to jump in if Draco snapped again, which was entirely likely given how tightly wound he currently was. "That's exactly what Miss Granger said to me."

"Because it's true."

"You're wonderfully in sync, I must say," Rita said casually, her sharp eyes flitting between the two of them again. Hermione didn't like how familiar the tone was. It was exactly the same tone she'd used in her fourth year of Hogwarts, when Rita had been keen to label her Harry's secret love.

"Goodbye, Ms Skeeter," she said coolly, and began walking with exaggerated purpose in the opposite direction to Rita, despite her office being the other way. The sharp clack of expensive loafers told her that Draco had followed her lead and was now behind her. She relaxed a little, knowing that he wasn't still back there, picking a fight with small fry like Skeeter. The freedom from tension was short-lived; she jumped as a hand rested on the small of her back and Draco appeared beside her. His hand dropped as suddenly as it had appeared.

"Sorry," she thought she heard him say, and she was so occupied trying to work out if it was her imagination that she didn't notice the flash go off behind her.

 **A/N: You are the loveliest readers and reviewers ever. Thank you so much for making me want to come back and write more each time! xo**


	7. Chapter 7

**This chapter is dedicated to the utterly beautiful soul _Komeko-chan_ , whose loving and delightful reviews pulled me out of a very dark place and back into writing. I owe you, and I hope this chapter delights you as much as your reviews delighted me.**

Chapter 7

Ron Weasley was struggling to stand as he left the Muggle bar on Chancery Lane. He made a valiant effort however, and stumbled from the establishment, ignoring the familiar way in which the walls were not as straight as they should be. He figured he should be used to the floor not staying where it belonged, used to the sensation of trying to walk on undulating ground as he left the bar, considering every night was the same. Different bar, different drinks, same conclusion.

"Have a good one, mate, take care of yourself now," the bouncer said cordially, and Ron wondered if he was doing a better job of feigning sobriety than he felt.

"Cheers mate," he replied. Was he slurring? He didn't think so. Did the bouncer have two heads? Very possibly. "Gotta go back to my girl," he grinned, as he pictured Hermione in his minds eye. She definitely didn't have two heads. She had one very beautiful head.

The bouncer returned the grin. "Sounds good to me."

Despite his inebriation, Ron knew better than to try apparating under the influence. Drunk-splinching was an unpleasant enough experience the first time around without the possibility of it happening again. He could, if he wanted, walk the few metres to the Leaky Cauldron and Floo home, but he generally tried to avoid wizarding establishments these days. It was too possible to bump into someone he knew, or worse, someone that he didn't know, but who knew him.

That said, the draw of a bed for the night only minutes away, rather than walking home in this state, sounded enticing. It was, after all, nearly three o'clock in the morning. Maybe it was late (early?) enough for him to go to the Leaky Cauldron and book a room for a few hours without drawing too much attention to himself.

Using the last few coherent thoughts he could come up with, he checked his coin pouch, spotted a few galleons dispersed amongst the rolled-up parchment, spare Muggle coins and a pair of shoelaces, and headed towards the pub. An hour later, he was in a boxy room over the Leaky Cauldron pub, the scratchy blanket up to his chin, and his eyes on the brink of closure.

Hermione's face swam before his eyes, and Ron, in his drunken haze reached out to touch her, only to have his fingers meet nothing. Merlin, she really was beautiful, wasn't she? They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, and in Hermione's case that really was true; you could discern everything she was thinking with just a glance to her eyes. But lately, he'd been seeing something in Hermione's eyes that he couldn't put a finger on. Maybe he couldn't identify it because he couldn't see it clearly through his pounding hangovers, or maybe because he just didn't know how to read her so well anymore. All he knew was that her eyes were sad, and she'd forgotten how to smile around him when he stumbled home in the evenings.

What had happened to them? They'd been so perfect. Closing his eyes, he reminisced on the times where they had been Ron-and-Hermione, the perfect couple. Holding hands as they ran along the riverbank at two in the morning, giggling as they made their way to Diagon Alley to the Allen Aldvitch's All-Night Milkshake Cafe to share a Double Deluxe Banoffee Pie Shake. Hermione's brilliant smile as he used his Keeper strength to lift her over the threshold to their first flat, her utter joy as she opened the champagne to celebrate Ron being accepted onto the Auror programme. His victories were her victories. His pride was her pride. She shared in his defeats and disappointments.

Except his biggest defeat. She couldn't share in that because she didn't even know about it. He didn't have to heart to tell her, to see her soulful eyes round with sadness for him, the disappointment and shame etched into every part of her face. So, no. He wouldn't ever be able to tell her about that. A small part of him hoped he'd never need to and she would be none the wiser. It was bad enough seeing the cautious way she carried on around him on the rare occasions they were at home together; it was as though she was living with a man that she no longer knew.

And she was scared. Of him? Surely not. He knew he could have a bit of a temper, but he'd never hurt Hermione. But the way she'd flinched away the other day…maybe this habit of his was doing more harm than good. He barely had the capacity to finish that thought before the dark enveloped him and he fell into a dreamless, drunken, stupor.

* * *

"If you haven't been living under a rock for the past few weeks, you will know the tragic story of ten-year-old Lindi Pillett, who is fighting for her life in St. Mungo's after a terrible accident involving highly poisonous bloodroot. Miss Pillett's parents are also fighting a battle of their own, against the obvious incompetence of the St Mungo's Healers. Hiring Miles Attwater, who is generously donating his time to the cause, the Pillett family is serious about justice for their youngest child, who is supposed to be starting Hogwarts this year.

"It's heartbreaking," Mrs Pillett sobbed to me earlier, her pretty almond eyes spilling tears of anguish as she recalls the image of her daughter who is being held in a magical coma in the very hospital that nearly burned her to death. "We just want her safe and well at home. And we want whoever did this to own up to it."

The issue is, unsurprisingly, that the Healers of St. Mungo's are denying all responsibility. However, this paper suspects that the Ministry of Magic, the legal team of which are defending the lawsuit, now more than they let on about the healers liability. When lead advocate Hermione Granger is spending more time dallying with the St. Mungo's Magical Medical Negligence Liaison Healer Draco Malfoy, and less time preparing for the trial which takes place in the very near future, one has to question their commitment to this case, suggesting that the Ministry do not believe they can win. A loss would be a career-ending disaster for Miss Granger, who has a lot to prove. Being Harry Potter's best friend can only take you so far, especially when you're seen in such close company of "reformed" Death Eater, Draco Malfoy. This reporter wonders how Miss Granger's long-term partner and childhood sweetheart Ron Weasley feels about all of this. He was unavailable for comment.

Keep an eye on future _Prophet_ articles to see how this story unfolds."

Hermione rolled her eyes as she folded the morning newspaper shut, placing the photo of her with Draco's hand upon her back face-down on the coffee table. She was very fond of Barnabas Cuffe, but sometimes he allowed his paper to be contaminated by the likes of Rita Skeeter, and it had her shaking her head in despair. Trust her to make it more about Hermione ad Draco being - shock horror - seen together, and less about the magical mystery that was Lindi Pillett.

She flopped down on her sofa and covered her eyes with the crook of her elbow, squeezing her eyes shut against the fresh sunlight bullying its way through the gaps of the roughly drawn curtains. She would definitely be working from home today; she did not have the energy to get dressed and Floo to the office. She'd spent another night reading about how to control fire with magic, and she still couldn't grasp the full technique, which was something of a novelty for her. It really was some of the most difficult magic out there. For some of the most powerful wizards and witches, like Albus Dumbledore, whom Hermione remembered had used fire to ward off Inferii hours before his death, controlling fire required decades of practice and commitment. For many, it was impossible.

She couldn't remain still for long. Easing herself up and ignoring her protesting muscles, she fetched a candle from the mantlepiece, resting them on the low table where her discarded newspaper lay. She lit it with the tip of her wand and watched the flame bob about contentedly. Lighting a candle with one's wand was the most basic of fire-magic. She had come a long way since shooting bluebell safety flames at Devils Snare. She couldn't help smiling as she remembered.

 _"Devil's Snare...what did professor sprout say? It likes the dark as the damp-"_

 _"So light a fire!"_

 _"Yes - of course - but there's no wood!"_

 _"HAVE YOU GONE MAD? ARE YOU A WITCH OR NOT?"_

She bit back a chuckle, and then the desire to laugh at all completely died within her. She remembered when Ron had completely had her back, and despite mocking her on a regular basis, realised and admired her values, not to mention her ability to get both of those boys out of more than a few tight spots throughout their tumultuous school career.

The Ron she knew now simply was not the same person who had comforted her as she'd wept over Mad Eye Moody's death, the person who had cursed himself to vomit slugs after Malfoy had called her a Mudblood, the person who had kept her company over many a summer holiday before Harry showed up with whatever drama accompanied him that year. She still wasn't sure when she'd blinked and missed the transition.

" _Engorgio_ ," she whispered at the flickering flame, and watched as it doubled, then tripled in size. Engaging with fire, making it larger, or smaller, was fairly simple. What she wanted to do was completely change the way the fire operated. Play with its elemental make-up, so to speak. She wanted to make the fire burn cold.

Leaning close enough to the flame that she could feel the soft heat tickle her cheeks, she tried to focus on nothing but the orange and yellow blend, the waving, fluid tip and the dark curl of the wick at the base.

Ultimately, mind control was the key to all magic. Focus on the desired result, focus on the desired incantation, focus on the wand movement…it all came down to focus. Even the more advanced magic, like Occlumency, Legilimency, Patronuses and Apparition, came down to the ability to focus the mind without distraction. Luckily for her, Hermione Granger was not easily distracted. All she had to do, was make that flame cool to the touch.

"That's all," she reassured herself. She filled her mind with as many cold things as she could think of; a glass of ice cold pumpkin juice in the morning, the crisp, fresh Hogwarts winters...Draco's frigid fingers when their hands touched in the corridor outside Hestia Jones's office...

And yet, despite an hour passing surprisingly quickly, the flame was not even a degree cooler, and she blew it out in exhausted frustration. The tendrils of smoke twirled before her eyes and she tugged on her hair exasperatedly. Leaning back on the sofa, Hermione dragged two weary palms down her face, massaging her cheeks and sighing heavily. She felt drained beyond belief. How had Lindi done that with the fire? The clock in the corner struck eight thirty and Hermione's eyes fluttered shut. Sleep was close; pulling her into his gentle caress, stroking her hair and crooning a lullaby. She was so ready to fall into his waiting arms and succumb to her exhaustion. So ready…

 _Bang!_

With a jolt that sent chills down to her toes, Hermione snapped awake, and leapt up, her war-honed instincts drawing her wand and pointing it towards the now open door. She sagged back down into the chair, adrenaline burning in her veins, when she realised it was only Ron.

"What the hell is this, Hermione?" Through groggy eyes, she saw that her boyfriend was grasping a crumpled copy of the same paper Hermione had read a few hours ago.

"Ron…where have you been?" she asked, sluggishly taking in his bedraggled jumper, idly aware of the fact that he left yesterday wearing it, his ruffled hair, and the dark circles under his eyes.

"That doesn't matter. What _matters_ ," he took a step forward, "what _matters_ , Hermione, is that Malfoy has his dirty mitts all over you in the national press. It's bad enough that he's in my fire at all times of night, but now you seem to be letting him feel you up in public-"

Hermione sighed. She might have known that Ron wouldn't respond well to Rita Skeeter's latest drivel, but she was almost too tired to care. "We work together, Ron, we'd had a bad day and we were just taking a bit of downtime. Skeeter popped up inappropriately as usual."

"Since when did 'working together' mean pawing each other up in corridors?" he growled, pacing in front of the mantlepiece. Hermione dragged herself to her feet, to grab the cold cup of coffee on the side table next to her own copy of the Prophet.

"You're overreacting, Ronald…"

"How am I overreacting? Since when is it overreacting to be upset when you're eating your cereal, and suddenly see a picture of your girlfriend with her hands all over the worst person to walk this planet?"

Hermione snorted. "And now we've moved on to exaggeration." She was honestly too tired to handle Ron's insane conjecture. She ran a weary hand through her unkempt hair. She wasn't even going to be able to work from home today; she'd owl Hestia and explain that she needed to take a day off work. It wasn't as though she needed the hours; she'd worked more than her fair share in the last few years, and Hestia would not have any problem with an impromptu day of leave. "Ronald, I am going to go to bed, so you can calm down, and then we can discuss this like adults."

"No, you will stay right here so we can talk right now!" He was close enough to her now that Hermione could see the varying shades of ginger in the patchy stubble on his cheeks. She used to love examining this face; the gentle creases around his eyes which crinkled up when he laughed, the one freckle on the side of his nose which stood our more than the others when he blushed, his bright blue eyes which seemed to darken to a deep teal when he was lustful.

Not that she had seen him laugh, blush or remotely aroused in recent months. All of those memories had become blurred around the edges, shattered by broken botles, drunken stupors, angry outbursts and a permanent sadness behind his unfocussed eyes.

"What do you want to talk about then, Ronald? How you're never here? Or how, when you are here, you're drunker than Hagrid at Aragog's funeral? Or how you treat me like crap? Or...no wait let me guess, you want to talk about this completely fictional relationship you think I'm having with Draco Malfoy because, unlike you, he has the decency to treat me like an a human being?"

Ron could only stare at her, and Hermione felt the familiar twinge of sadness in her heart. God, she missed Old Ron. She wanted to take him into her arms and hold him forever, them against the world. But that wasn't Ron anymore. That simply wasn't him. Ron went to run his hands through his hair, and stopped abruptly when he saw his girlfriend flinch involuntarily.

"What the hell, Hermione? You're really that scared of me?" His hands dropped to his sides.

"You don't think I have good reason?" She tried to fight the wobble in her voice, but honestly she was too tired to fight anything anymore. She watched impassively as Ron sank to the floor, head in his hands.

"I love you so much, Hermione, how did we end up here?" he mumbled into his palms. He looked up at her, his bright eyes that she used to love so much, staring at her beseechingly.

"All the times you weren't drinking, you were spending at work," she whispered. "That's how."

Ron let out a ragged sigh. "I think it's time I told you some things."

* * *

Draco Malfoy was having a Really Terrible Awful Bad Day. Never before had he wished so hard that he had been punished more severely for his involvement in the war. At least then he would be hidden safely in Azkaban or someplace equally as secluded, rather than be exposed to the stares and gossip of his co-workers, his patients and the rest of St. Mungo's. He had only been in work for two hours and already he knew the drill. First, someone would spot him. Next, they'd do a double-take just to make sure it was, in fact, the man featured on the front page of the _Prophet_. Third, they would immediately start whispering (or in some cases, talking rather loudly) to their companion and start pointedly at him. Or, if they didn't have a companion, they'd skip straight to the staring part. Then another person would spot him and it'd begin all over again.

And that was how he found himself, for the first time in his adult memory, in a St. Mungo's supply closet, partially pressed up against a pile of bedpans. When the door swung closed, he let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding.

 _Bloody Skeeter_. She knew exactly what she was doing. She wasn't happy with the way he and Granger had treated her, so she took revenge in the only way she knew how. And now he looked like a fool, and Hermione looked like...what did his mother call them...oh yes, a hussy. And everyone would be feeling sorry for Weasley, of all people...

 _Crap._ Weasley would have seen this. And if he blew up over Draco Floo-ing Hermione, he could only imagine what he would do seeing the two of them physically touching. His blood ran cold. He needed to get to Hermione.

He turned and headed for the door, but before he'd even reached for the handle, it had opened, and he was suddenly face-to-chest with Marietta Edgecombe. Merlin, she really was a tiny little thing.

Taking a respectful step back, he glanced down at her and was met with an intense, searching gaze. "What?" He tried to keep the snap out of his tone, but she had both hands on the doorframe, effectively pinning him into the cramped space, when he really, really needed to get out and get to the Ministry to check on Hermione. Maybe she'd got into work before Weasley had woken up. Maybe he could get to her in time and...and...well he wasn't sure, but at the very least he could walk her home. But what about after he left? What would Weasley do then?

"Are you okay?" Marietta asked, one eyebrow raised. Gods, she was just so, so small. Draco could have placed his hands on her waist and lifted her out of his way. But Draco was a gentleman, and besides, he didn't fancy getting slapped today. Marietta seemed like the slapping kind.

"I'm fine. But I have to-" he never finished his sentence as Marietta placed two fingertips on his solar plexus, and pushed him backwards into the cupboard. In one fluid movement, she stepped in after him, locked the door behind her and grabbed his Healing robes to stop him toppling to the floor.

"Edgecombe, what the-" she placed a hand over his mouth. "You have absolutely zero appreciation for personal space, you know," he mumbled against her palm, and the lemony taste of a Sterilisation Spell residue tickled his lips. He clasped her wrist and moved her hand away.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Checking you're okay."

"I was fine til you pushed me into a supply closet!"

"You were already in the closet!" There was a beat of silence and she blinked. "No euphemism intended."

Draco scoffed. "I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be fine?"

"Well, being publicly the laughing stock and the subject of judgmental stares at your place of work is rarely what one would consider pleasant," she said with a shrug. "I should know." He involuntarily scanned her cheeks, knowing what she was referring to.

"Believe me, Edgecombe, this is not the first time. Ex-Death eater, remember?" Marietta shrugged, and Draco got the distinct impression that she did not consider the trials and tribulations of being branded by the Dark Mark in the post-war society was not nearly as terrible as being publicly branded a "sneak" in high school. He couldn't help his lip twitching in amusement. _The cheek of it._

"Marietta, I'm fine. But I have to go and check-"

"Good. Then you'll be interested in this!" she dangled a vial in front of his face. "I've been working on a way to save Lindi, since I'm not allowed to perform magical surgical procedures on anyone at the moment. I've got a lot of lab time. But anyway, we know there's no antidote to bloodroot yet, but I was thinking, what if...and bear with me on this one...what if we could create a potion which, when we put it into a person, it does the same job as we would when we open her up? Like, rather than find something that reacts with bloodroot to eliminate it, what if we could just...flush her through?"

"You want to give her a potion that will...make her... pee poison?"

"Oh don't look so sceptical. It could work."

Draco was frowning so hard he could feel his eyebrows touching. "If it was that easy, then why has no one done it yet?"

"Because, _genius_ ," his companion sighed, "most of the time, the bloodroot has left the digestive system and already hit the bloodstream, so this method wouldn't help anyway. But, we got to Lindi in time, and now she's suspended, so the bloodroot is still fresh in her digestive system. If we can keep her suspended while we flush her through, she'll be in the clear."

Draco shook his head slowly, the cogs in his brain turning. "That still seems too easy."

With a pout, Marietta socked him in the arm. "Spoilsport. I've looked at it from every angle, and it has to work. And if we don't have to cut Lindi open, whatever happened last time shouldn't happen again, right?"

"But we don't know what happened last time, so we can't be sure."

"Are you always this much of a downer, Draco? Or is this just what happens when your sexcapades with a certain Gryffindor become public?" She wiggled her eyebrows, and Draco was torn between being infuriated or amused. He settled for a curious combination of the two, and swatted her gently out of the way so he could get to the door.

"I've got to go."

"Oh, wait!" Marietta chirped and as he turned back, she grabbed his robes once again, tugging them off of his shoulder.

"What-" but her fingers were in his hair, ruffling it wildly, before he got all of his words out.

"I'm glad you don't use so much hair gel anymore, or this could be kinda gross." As suddenly as she had grabbed him, she'd let him go, and was now pinching her cheeks, turning them a glowing rosy pink, and tossing her hair to make it even more flyaway than usual. She stepped back (or as much as she could in such a cramped space) to admire her handiwork.

"There, you'll do." Draco could only look at her in stunned silence as she reached past him and grabbed the door handle. _Do?!_ He was an utter mess!

"Best way to put a rumour to bed? Start a new one." She winked at him and pushed him out of the closet, stepping out smartly behind him. Giving him a final smirk and a wave, and pretending that she didn't notice everyone on the hospital floor staring at them incredulously, she strutted off down the corridor, leaving Draco to face the silent judgment alone. Straightening his robes and flattening down his hair, he watched the back of her head as she turned the corner, a bemused smile playing on his lips, before turning to glare at his audience.

"Alright, nothing to see here, back to work," he grunted with a dismissive flick of his hand, and there was a flurry of activity as everyone tried to look busy once more.

"Healer Malfoy!" Draco turned to face the voice which had called him, which incidentally belonged to a very senior nurse, Madam Winthrop.

"Nothing happened, honestly she-"

"Healer Malfoy, while your romantic escapades may be of huge interest to the rest of the magical population, I can assure you that they hold no such interest for me," the nurse said firmly, and Draco felt a gently heat in his cheeks.

"I came to tell you about a problem we have."

"What?"

"Follow me." Draco trotted along the corridor at the nurse's heels, until she stopped abruptly in front of a closed door.

A closed door behind which someone was screaming. He shivered involuntarily.

"This is not a pleasant scene, Healer Malfoy, but it was felt that you should be summoned." The nurse's face had lost her usual pinched expression, and was instead replaced with anxiety, which did not seem to match her pointed features. What was happening?

He suddenly caught the number on the door.

This was Lindi Pillett's room. And someone inside was screaming.

 **A/N: I'm baaaack! I know, it's been too long. Life sucks. Sorry. I won't bore you with the details, especially since I am currently BUZZING from seeing The Cursed Child the other day and it was AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFULLY PHENOMENAL! (even if it did kind of make Romione seem more plausible to me...I'll try and ignore those vibes though! And no spoilers, but if you do happen to go see it, watch out for the gentle nod to Dramione as well...!)**

 **By the way…I am looking for a beta reader (or two)! If you like where this story is going, fancy being my soundboard for ideas/checking I don't screw up tenses or miss out important plot points (which is possible, considering I don't write each chapter in one session), and don't mind that I am a veeeeery irregular writer/updater, send me a PM and apply within…**

 **Thank you to all who have reviewed or interacted with this story in some way so far. I may not have replied to all of you but I appreciate every word you write. You're the loveliest readers a girl could ask for.**


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

 _"I think it's time I told you some things."_

Hermione had never understood the phrase "blood ran cold" because blood was warm. Indiscriminately, indisputably warm. Warm blood made you human, made you alive. Blood could never just "run cold" in your veins.

Except…when she heard Ron utter those words, a chill ran through her so violently, from the core of her chest right down to her toenails, that it could only have been her blood turning to ice in an instant. What had Ron been hiding from her? In all of the years they had known each other, there were three things Hermione could rely on Ron for: his lack of tact, his unconditional loyalty to Harry and her, and his unwavering honesty.

She sank down into the sofa once more, ears ringing and all exhaustion forgotten in her anxious trepidation. Ron was sat cross-legged on the floor, his elbows on his knees and his fingers entangled in his matted ginger hair. She supposed she ought to say something, anything, to prompt him into telling her these "things". Maybe it would help get rid of the heavy rock of doom that had settled in the bottom of her gut, or stop her from choking on dread. Or maybe it would make it ten times worse.

"I dunno where to start, H'mione," he suddenly mumbled into his lap, and had Hermione not been holding her breath in the silent room, she might have missed it. He looked up at her and she stared back, completely at a loss about what to say to that. "I never made it through," he said in such a tortured tone that Hermione's every instinct shouted at her to bundle him up in her arms right there on the floor, and hold him tightly to block out the problems that were clearly eating him up.

And yet, she didn't move.

"I'm…not sure what…" she stammered.

"Auror training," Ron croaked. "I never passed the first set of training exams."

That definitely wasn't what Hermione had expected to hear. She had been psyching herself to hear that he had been having an affair, or that he was finally going to admit he had a problem with alcohol. She was not expecting to hear that he failed his Auror exams.

"But that was – they were –"

"Months ago, I know." Ron had gone back to talking to his lap, and Hermione frowned as she tried to comprehend the situation.

"But surely they can let you resit –"

Ron cut her off with a slight raise of one of his hands. "They did, Hermione…they let me resit them twice. And I failed them twice more. And then they kicked me out of the programme. Five months ago."

Hermione got the feeling she needed to be angrier, more shocked, more...anything, but she could only stare at him blankly, her brain not able to process exactly what he was telling her. She clunked through her thoughts sluggishly. She'd never experienced this in her life, where her brain refused to logically take her through thoughts and end up in a position to respond. It was unnerving, unpleasant, and if she ever felt this again, it would be altogether too soon.

Thankfully, Ron was feeling a little more talkative now, as though a cork had popped out of a champagne bottle, and all of the words were tumbling out frantically.

"I've been pretending to go to work for five months…Harry said he wouldn't tell, and you're never on the Auror floors of the Ministry anyway…to be honest, I didn't think you'd buy it for this long, but I guess you don't really pay much attention to me…too busy…which is pretty tragic…"

He mumbled his way into silence again and Hermione, whose brain had slowly started to function again, cast her mind back to about six months prior. She remembered Ron studying and practicing for his exams, at all hours of the night, and she distinctly remembered the night both he and Harry had received their results.

 _"Ron, come away from the window, mate…it won't make them get here any faster!" Harry took a long swig of his Butterbeer and threw his arm around Ginny lazily on the sofa, pulling her into his chest. Ron didn't move, simply stayed perched on the windowsill, idly tapping the frame._

 _"It's almost ten…shouldn't they have been here by now? Are they always this late?" Ron glanced over to where the couple was lounging. "Didn't the class above us say what time they arrive? Other than 'in the evening', I mean?"_

 _"I'm sure they'll be here soon," Hermione said from the floor, where she was surrounded by books and parchment, a quill between her teeth as she flicked through some pages. She heard Ron scoff._

 _"Like you'd be interested at all, if you didn't live here," he grumbled, and Hermione's hand froze on her page as she heard Harry suck in his breath._

 _"Careful, mate…" he muttered, and Hermione met Ron's eyes._

 _"Excuse me?" The frost in her voice was palpable, and Ron visibly winced._

 _"You're just…always working. Even when we're here, trying to hang out together after a long day."_

 _"That's what my job demands of me, Ronald."_

 _"I'm not sure…I mean, it's just reading, and we all know you're good at that-"_

 _"Just reading?_ Just _reading?" Hermione gaped, and her fingers twitched towards her wand before she got it under control and placed her hand deliberately back onto her book. "I do a lot more than 'just reading'-"_

 _"I just mean, you're not having to study hard spells and stuff-"_

 _"Like you, you mean?" Hermione raised an eyebrow. "Well, I'm sorry you don't consider my job important, Ronald. I'm only helping excellent Healers keep their jobs, after all. That's definitely not important at all, making sure that there are Healers in the hospitals, ready and waiting for when you inevitably blow your own arm off practicing these 'hard spells', which, I'm sure I could cast better than you on my worst day."_

 _Ron's ears lit up, glowing red, and Hermione mildly regretted her words. She knew how hard Ron had been working on becoming an Auror, and she was very proud of him for how dedicated he'd been. But still, how dare he belittle her job? Just because she wasn't on the front line, that didn't mean she wasn't fighting battles of her own. And besides, did they really need a "front line" when they were in this period of peace after the longest war of the Wizarding World?_

 _"Now, that's uncalled for—" Ron was spluttering._

 _"No, really, tell me more about how useless and easy my job is? Tell me more about how it is completely unnecessary to defend a Healer whose career is on the line because his patient didn't tell him that she was allergic to Dittany. Tell me more, Ronald."_

 _The room was deathly silent as the two of them stared at each other, and eventually Ron was the one who broke eye contact, looking back to the window._

 _"I was just saying…it'd be nice if you paid more attention to what your friends were going through…we work in the same building and yet we never see you."_

 _Hermione's retort was cut short by Ron's sudden intake of breath and the window being flung open. In the distance, the unmistakable silhouette of two owls grew to full size as they approached the window. Without even landing, they flew into the room, dropped their letters in a neat pile on the floor, circled the ceiling, and headed straight out again._

 _Both boys simply stared at the letters on the floor; even Harry, who had been so relaxed about the whole thing, now had tension written all over his face. In the end, Ginny uncurled herself from her spot on the sofa, rolling her eyes, and picked up the envelopes, flinging one at Harry, who caught it without appearing to look at it, and passing the other to Ron, who looked altogether too ill to have been up to catching anything._

 _The seconds passed slowly as the boys slit open their envelopes. Hermione watched first Harry's and then Ron's face for any signs of what might be written on the parchment in their hands, but the boys were giving nothing away. Ginny moved first; grabbing the parchment from Harry's fingers and scanning it quickly, before letting out a squeal and flinging her arms around his neck. Harry grinned at Hermione over her shoulder, and the two of them looked over at Ron._

 _"Well?" Hermione asked, getting up and reaching out for his letter, but he quickly stuffed it in his back pocket._

 _"'Course I nailed it," he said with a shrug and a weak grin, and the four of them hugged and laughed until their faces hurt._

 _"I'll open the bubbly," Ginny beamed and hurried into the kitchen, where Hermione knew she had secretly stashed two bottles of champagne and a cake from Mrs Weasley with "_ Congrats Harry & Ron" _iced in loopy writing on the top. The trio left in the sitting room smiled at each other and it felt like old times again._

"I started drinking that night...and I never really stopped," Ron suddenly said, and Hermione jumped out of her reverie. "I didn't really have a reason to; I knew I was never gonna pass those exams-"

"You could have asked for my help, Ron," she said, her voice unexpectedly gravelly. "You could have asked - I would have helped -"

"Would you?" he snapped. " _Would_ you? You barely have time to be my girlfriend, let alone be my _personal tutor_ as well-"

"I would have tried to help! I would have made some time-"

"Oh, like you make time to get fondled by Draco Malfoy-"

"It _always_ comes down to him. I _told you_ we-"

"Just work together, yeah, yeah, I already know the stories-"

"This is not about him! This is about you-"

"Yeah, me and how much of a failure I am compared to Malfoy-"

"No!" Hermione screeched, leaping up and stabbing a finger into his chest. Ron blinked but miraculously his mouth remained closed. "No, Ron. This is about _you_. This is about why _you_ hid this all from me, why _you_ never asked for any help, why _you_ turned to drink rather than to me. This is about _you._ " She took a deep, shuddering breath. "This is about why you come home drunk every night, or don't bother come home at all! This is about why you made sure I went to work with a black eye, and spent a whole day hoping no one would notice! This…this is about you."

She felt the anger bubble up inside of her like lava preparing to explode from a volcano. She hadn't really felt anything quite this strongly in a long time; not anger, not happiness, not passion, and not even her fear of what injury she would get from Ron next was this fiery. She felt herself crackle with rage.

And yet, as suddenly as it arrived, the anger faded to almost nothing, to rest upon the sidelines and give way to a much stronger emotion: pity. She felt sad for Ron, wallowing in his failure, drowning himself in a bottle every night for endless nights, and coming home to a girlfriend who was too caught up in her own work to recognise his pain. A girlfriend who was so scared for herself in his presence that she didn't stop to think that he might be hurting.

Merlin, she was so _selfish_. And to think she had almost blamed Ron for all of this mess, when every single thing she had done had done nothing but fuel the flames of his feelings of failure.

She became acutely aware that she was still standing on her tiptoes, her finger pressed into Ron's chest. She lowered her heels to the floor and splayed her palm on his torso gently, feeling the rise and fall of his heavy, tense breaths as he watched her warily. She looked up at him, trying to work out how they went so terribly wrong, and how she could fix it. She was, after all, responsible for the way things had all fallen apart. How had it taken her so long to realise that?

"Ron…" she half-whispered. "Oh, Ron."

Ron still hadn't moved, but his eyes locked onto hers, red-rimmed and defeated.

"We should go away, go somewhere," she said suddenly, as inspiration hit her.

"Somewhere?"

"Go on a retreat, away from people and problems, and try and fix us." It suddenly made a lot of sense. Away from all of the distractions of work for her, and away from any drink for Ron, she could work on a way to make herself a better girlfriend, a better person. And she could help Ron like she should have all along. "We could even use that time to help get you back on the Auror track."

Ron was already shaking his head as she got more enthused by the idea. "How would we afford to just…leave…Hermione? I don't have a bloody _job."_

That small detail had failed to cross Hermione's mind until Rom mentioned it, but she was Hermione Granger. She didn't allow minor obstacles such as money to hold her back. "I have savings, from when my parents…left." She felt the usual stab in her heart as she thought about her parents, but it felt dull, so overwhelmed was she about how she could repair her shattered relationship. She couldn't fix her parents despite the best efforts of every magical professional she knew, and so in Australia they stayed, never knowing they had a daughter. But she could fix this. She could fix Ron, she could fix _them_.

The man in question had not stopped shaking his head. "No, we bloody well can't, Hermione-"

"I don't mind, this is all my fault-"

"Wait a minute, you just said this was all _on me-"_

 _"_ Yes, well, I was wrong; so if you'd just let me FIX it-"

"We can't go away, Hermione-"

"Yes we can! I can get someone to cover me while I'm gone-"

"I SPENT THE MONEY, HERMIONE."

The roar echoed in the immediate silence that followed. Hermione's ears rang, and her vision blurred around the edges. "Wh—what?"

She must have misheard. Somehow, despite Ron bellowing loud and clear two feet away from her face, she must have completely misheard what he had said.

"I spent the money, Hermione," he croaked. "Your money. I spent it."

Hermione's legs crumpled beneath her and she stumbled, but before she hit the floor, Ron's arms grabbed her.

"Let me go," she mumbled, batting his arms away.

"Don't be an idiot," he huffed, lifting her and placing her back on the sofa.

"I said, let me GO!" She slapped his forearm, the slap resonating in the flat, which suddenly felt far too small. She tried to avoid looking at the walls, which seemed to be closing in, and she tried to avoid looking at the man who stood before her after admitting he'd betrayed her so thoroughly. "You spent my money? My money? My _parents'_ money?"

"I…I didn't mean to take a lot." His tone sounded apologetic, but it didn't matter anymore. "Just enough to buy a few drinks, and make sure I had somewhere to sleep some nights when I didn't make it home. But then…I owed a guy, some Muggle, and I hadn't been paid in months…and he said he'd come after me if I didn't pay up…"

Hermione's stomach twisted and she wondered for a few seconds whether she was going to be sick there and then. The voice at the back of her head reminded her that if she was going to hurl, to make sure she aimed for Ron's shoes.

"Out," she whispered.

"What? Yeah, I took out more than I planned to, but I was going to pay it back, honest…"

"Out," she said more firmly. "Get out. Get out of my flat."

"What?" she could hear his bewilderment, but the guilt she could feel under the surface of her skin was so very oppressed by her anger, betrayal, and complete disbelief. "But, Hermione, you just said we could work this out…"

"That was before you happened to mention that you'd COMPLETELY violated my trust and ROBBED my bank account! What's _wrong_ with you?"

"Wrong with me? You said, you _just right now_ said you wanted to fix this and now you're kicking me out!" Ron spluttered. "You said, if we ever needed it, we had the key to your savings account-"

"That doesn't mean you were free to just dip into it whenever you needed to pay off one of your drinking buddies!" Hermione could not believe she was even having this incredulous conversation. It was surreal. How was it possible that she had to explain to a grown man that it was inappropriate to take savings from your girlfriend, without telling her, to pay off a debt to someone whilst you were out drinking and pretending you had a job?

She sighed heavily and got to her feet for what felt like the hundredth time this evening. It seemed unfathomable that just a mere hour ago, she'd been ready to fall into bed after a hard night of working on new and exciting magic. Every limb felt heavier than it had ever felt before, and accompanied with the heaviness in her heart and her head, it was enough to make her ears ring and her eyelids droop.

"Fine," she said, all fight completely dissipated. "Fine. You won't leave, I will."

Without a backwards glance, she picked up her wand, took her coat from the hook by the door, and left the flat, and the bewildered man stood in the middle of it, behind.

And that was how Hermione Granger found herself in a dingy cafe in the middle of London, nursing a hot chocolate, paid for by a handful of Muggle coins she'd been lucky enough to find in her coat. She poked at the lumpy mixture with her wooden stirrer, trying not to think too much about the white flecks of milk powder floating on the top. Heaping another three sugars into the already saturated cardboard cup, she cupped her hands around the meagre heat emanating from the drink and looked out the window. The city had well and truly woken up now, with the bustling commuters and hoards of tourists. Many, like Hermione, were nursing hot drinks, though from slightly more upmarket establishments than the grimy all-night cafe, and wearing slightly sharper clothing than her baggy coat and shabby leggings.

Still idly stirring her drink, she contemplated what had just happened. Yet again, despite her complete incredulity at this situation, she couldn't help but notice the creep of guilt in the back of her mind, tickling the base of her skull. If only she'd spoken to Ron before it'd reached to this stage. Perhaps if he hadn't been drowning his sorrows for months because he couldn't talk to her, she might have managed to fix the problems, or found him a new job, or something, _anything_ to stop him from falling into the mess that he was now in. She might not have lost all of her money. It was all her own, miserable fault.

She pushed the lumpy hot chocolate away from her and lay her head on the table.

"You alright, darl?" the greasy lady who had served her drink was at the other table, wiping an equally greasy cloth over the surface. Hermione shrugged awkwardly from her position on the table and then sat up, feeling a little queasy as though thought about the state of the workshop that was currently touching her cheek.

Grimacing, she shrugged in answer to the waitress's question. "Life, you know."

"The mister causing you trouble?" the woman mused, a strand of her greasy hair – was anything in this place NOT greasy? - escaping from her bun as she swayed backwards and forwards over the table she wiped in utter futility. Without waiting for an answer, she sighed a huge puff of air. "Men. Pigs; all of 'em."

"Quite," Hermione muttered, though she wasn't certain the waitress was expecting her to interact.

"Me man walked out on me the other week," the waitress continued to natter on. "Said I was gettin' too fat. But then Stella down the road told me he'd been bonkin' Patricia from number 36, so really he was just makin' rubbish up to get rid of me. Pig."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Yeah, well, men are pigs. All of 'em."

"Yes, you said."

"Yours didn't deserve a pretty little thing like you anyway," the waitress smiled at Hermione. "You're better rid of 'im."

Hermione couldn't recall telling the woman that her problems were caused by a man, but she really couldn't be bothered to get into it with a stranger. She pulled out a few more coins from her pocket and placed them down on the table next to her mug. "Thanks," she muttered as she stood up and pulled her coat more firmly around her and headed for the door.

"Don't let the sod get you down, darl," the woman called as the door rattled shut on the cafe.

Back on the busy street, Hermione spent a few seconds wondering what to do now. She couldn't go home and risk facing Ron again. She couldn't go to work dressed as she was-that would draw far too many unwanted questions. She couldn't face Harry or Ginny, and she didn't have enough Muggle money to go anywhere off the wizarding grid.

The answer to her dilemma fell into her brain so suddenly and so forcibly that she almost felt her head rattle with the impact. Ducking into an alley next door to the café, she carefully placed herself between two wheelie bins and Disapparated.

 **A/N It's been so long! I still love you all. HUGE thanks to hogsmeadeshoneyduchess for doing an utterly amazing job at being both my alpha and beta reader and making sure this chapter delivers everything it needed to. Please check out their work - the Dramiones give me LIFE.**

 **Review, if you would be so kind! :)**


	9. Chapter 9

Previously:

 _Draco trotted along the corridor at the nurse's heels, until she stopped abruptly in front of a closed door. A closed door behind which someone was screaming. He shivered involuntarily. He suddenly caught the number on the door._

 _This was Lindi Pillett's room. And someone inside was screaming._

 **Chapter 9**

He was standing in the centre of chaos, and yet it felt to Draco as though everything was moving in slow motion. He could see Mrs Pillett in the corner, her face contorted in fear, tears streaming down her face. He could see three of the most senior Healers in the hospital, shooting beams of golden light all over the room. He could see the hospital's Potion Master, and his apprentice, by the window, decanting vial after vial of emerald green liquid. He could see nurses with wands out, forming a circle around the most horrific scene in the room.

Draco blinked and everything before his eyes snapped back into rapid activity.

Lindi, still hovering in mid-air, was convulsing from head to toe, and her eyes were wide open and completely bloodshot. Her mouth was open too, and Draco could now identify the source of the ghostly screaming that he'd heard from outside.

"What the hell happened?" He bellowed at the nearest nurse.

"What does it look like? She woke up!" she yelled back, bringing a second hand up to grip her wand. The nurses were struggling to maintain Lindi's levitation with all the writhing, and Draco got his own wand out, ready to lend a hand.

There was a tap on his shoulder and he spun round. Marietta Edgecombe stood behind him, her eyes wide orbs as she stared at the scene before her.

"Don't just stand there, Edgecombe" Draco growled. "Wand out."

"And do what?" she choked out in response, but followed his instruction anyway and pointed it reluctantly at the child.

The nurses levitating Lindi yelled in unison and Draco turned back to the centre of the room in time to see the child begin to plummet to the floor.

" _Arresto momentum_!" he heard himself bark and Lindi jerked to a stop mere millimetres from the floor and then came to rest gently on the ground. There was a haunting moment of silence and then Lindi's screams began again.

"Healer, what do we do?" the nurse nearest to him - Frangeline, Draco thought she was called - looked as helpless as Draco felt.

"Can we get her back under?" If they could get the girl back under sedation, perhaps that would buy them some more time.

The Healer in the corner of the room, who was still pouring vial after vial of green potion into the drip feeder which was supposed to be in Lindi's arm, shook his head. "The bloodroot is spreading fast. It's overriding everything we can do to put her back into stasis."

 _Damn._

Draco had no idea how to help.

 _Hermione would know._ He was certain of that. Despite all of his Healing training, his Outstanding in NEWT Advanced Potions, his years of studying the magical body…somehow he knew Hermione- rightfully dubbed the Brightest Witch of Her Age-would know what to do better than he did. Instinctively he turned around, ready to leave the room and Floo the Ministry, get her here to do—whatever it is she would inevitably do to save the little girl he was currently watching die before his very eyes. Plus, that way he'd know she was safe from Weasley after today's _Prophet_.

For the second time that day, he found himself with a mouthful of flyaway hair as he walked into Marietta Edgecombe yet again.

"Do you make a habit of this?" she rolled her eyes. "Where are you going?"

"Hermione. I need to get her-"

"Is now really the time to get your Granger fix? Tongues will wag."

"Shut up. She can help." He tried to push past the tiny, infuriating witch, and she pushed back, slipping the vial she'd shown him earlier into his hand.

"So can I."

Draco stared down at the small container in his palm. It was a standard issue St Mungo's potion vial-cheap glass with a cork stopper. Unremarkable. The potion inside, however, was anything but unremarkable, a pale magenta, so clear that Draco could see the skin of his hand through the bottle, just beyond the silver flecks suspended in the fluid.

"She'll pee poison?" he asked, his eyebrow raised dubiously, grey eyes boring into green.

"She'll pee poison," her wild hair bobbed as she nodded her head once, deliberately.

"You're sure?"

"Yes."

"Have you tested it?"

Silence.

"Marietta," he bit out. "Have you tested it?"

There was a pause, and then: "No."

"God _damn,_ " Draco growled, bringing a clenched fist to his forehead in frustration. Edgecombe wanted him to suggest giving an untested potion to an eleven-year-old?

"But it'll work!" she insisted urgently. "And we have nothing else."

"We could have Granger."

"To do what? Has she spent weeks in a lab, researching and creating an antidote? No, she hasn't! She's not even a bloody Healer!"

"Do you understand what you are asking me to do?" he said, biting his teeth together so hard that his jaw ached.

"Yes, because _it will work!"_

"Fine." With a massive sigh, he spun around again, the words on the tip of his tongue to get the experimental potion into Lindi Pillett.

His words died on his tongue as he took in the scene before him. Where he'd turned his back on a chaotic scene, he returned to face a scene of stillness.

The stillness of the nurses, even now holding their wands.

The stillness of Mrs Pillett in the corner, tears frozen on her cheeks.

The stillness of the girl on the floor, her eyes glassy and staring directly at Draco.

The stillness of the Senior Healer, his hand clasped around a vial of green potion, looking at his watch.

"Time of death: ten-fourteen."

Draco felt a warm, trembling hand slip into his; Marietta had joined him to face the horror that lay before him. He was grateful for the support; he wasn't sure exactly how he was still standing when he couldn't feel his legs, and his stomach had plummeted to the floor. He applied gentle pressure around her fingers as a silent thanks. She bumped her head against his shoulder in response, and then her hand was gone, as she stepped towards the prone body. Kneeling down, she reached out to close the girl's glassy eyes.

"Don't you dare touch my daughter."

Marietta froze; Mrs Pillett stepped forward, her wand aimed steadily at the Trainee Healer. Draco felt an odd, inappropriate rush of respect for the woman; she had just watched her eleven-year-old daughter lose the battle for her life, but she could still raise a wand without so much as a tremor.

"Don't you dare. You have done enough."

Somehow, Draco found himself with an arm around Marietta's shoulders, guiding her away from Lindi. He almost made it to the door before he stopped, turned his head back to Mrs Pillett who was now openly sobbing into her daughter's hair.

"I'm very sorry for your loss."

She raised her head to look at him. Draco recoiled from the pure venom that was in her gaze.

"You will be."

Even Voldemort himself had never made Draco feel so cold.

* * *

Draco didn't drop his hand from Marietta's shoulder as they walked down the corridor to one of St Mungo's break rooms. He wasn't sure he even knew how to move his arm if he'd wanted to, and it seemed as though the petite woman was using him for support in either case. He glanced down at her. She looked as devastated and shaken as he felt, her eyes downcast and allowing Draco to guide her without even a flicker of her usual bouncy enthusiasm or flippant comment.

He opened the door to the break room and set the Trainee Healer down on the sofa before crouching down in front of her.

"Hey," he said, surprised at how his voice cracked. "Are you-" He was going to ask her if she was okay, but realised the futility in it as she raised her watery eyes to meet his with the smallest flicker of contempt. He tried again. "That was not your fault, you hear me?" He grasped her hands from where they sat in her lap. They continued to shake in his grasp. "Edgecombe, you hear me? _Marietta-"_

"Wasn't it?" she whispered. "It was my wand on her, my potion which could have _saved_ her—"

"That is _not on you!"_ Draco growled. His head was pounding, but he needed to make sure that the witch before him understood this. "She was poisoned, you were trying to give her a chance to live! And then when that didn't work, you tried to give her _another_ chance but we were just out of time-"

Marietta was rocking backwards and forwards now, tears flowing freely. A small part of Draco's brain suddenly flashed back to memories of one of the house elves of his youth.

"I should have worked faster, tested it sooner…" she mumbled.

"Hey, hey, hey..." Draco settled himself next to Marietta and pulled her into his chest. Her wild hair tickled his chin and he couldn't help but be reminded of Hermione, and absently wondered what it would be like to hold her in this way. "You did everything you could. Everything."

"And it still wasn't enough…" Marietta moaned into his torso. "Merlin, I never thought something like this…. would be so…so _hard_."

"This is what we learn as Healers," Draco insisted, wishing he could take comfort from his own words. "It's not always sunshine. Some days are just...really, really crappy."

Marietta sniffed and pushed the palm of her hand across her watery eyes. Draco felt her breathing regulate and allowed her to sit up.

"You're different than what everyone says, you know," she told him.

"Different?"

"You're...nicer."

Despite everything, Draco smirked. "Nicer? That's the best you could come up with?"

"Beggars can't be choosers," she shrugged. "But seriously…thank you, Draco."

Draco got to his feet. "This doesn't mean I like you," he said nonchalantly, smoothing down his Healer robes. A watery giggle escaped Marietta's lips and he smirked again in response. "But seriously…" he continued, "shit happens, Edgecombe. All we can do now is try even harder to figure out what the hell happened to Lindi."

"Yeah, I know," Marietta sighed. "Anyway, don't you have a certain Ministry witch to track down?"

"I do," Draco strode over to the fireplace. Grasping a handful of Floo powder, he turned back to Marietta. "Are you sure you'll be okay?"

"I'll be fine," she nodded. "You should stop asking, or I might start thinking that you care."

"Never." He grinned wearily for a second, and stepped into the fireplace. "Ministry of Magic."

And in a puff of green flames, he was gone.

* * *

In an ideal world, Draco would have stepped out of the Floo in the Ministry Atrium with a little more elegance and poise than he actually did. However, it seemed as though his legs were still a little fragile following the day's events. As it were, he tripped over his own toes and only narrowly stopped himself from falling flat on his face. He heard a strangled laugh. Standing up and dusting off his robes, he spotted a young man, his mauve robes marking him out as a Ministry Intern. He was trying, and failing, to hide a grin.

"Sod off," Malfoy spat, although arguably without his usual poison. Nevertheless, it was still effective and the boy scarpered.

Having recovered some of his poise, Draco stepped out of the elevator as he'd hoped to leave the Floo, and strode towards the entrance to the Magical Law Enforcement department. He knocked on Hermione's door. He wasn't sure why, exactly; he usually just walked in.

No answer.

"Granger?" he knocked again, then tried the handle.

Locked.

"Must have a meeting," he muttered.

"Mr. Malfoy," a commanding voice carried down the corridor, and Draco was about to correct them ("it's _Healer_ Malfoy"), when he realised that the voice belonged to Hestia Jones.

"Madam Jones," he said with a respectful bow of his head, then indicated the locked door. "I came to update Hermione on the Pillett situation." Not true, but plausible.

"Miss Granger did not come into work this morning," Hestia told him. "I'm surprised that you don't already know that."

"I'm not sure I know what you mean," Draco said carefully. Was Madam Jones implying what he thought she was? Maybe she'd seen this morning's _Prophet_.

"You are…close, I had assumed," Hestia said. "After all, it is she you chose to visit to tell of Miss Pillett's tragic passing, rather than myself."

Draco's jaw dropped. "How did you—"

"Healer Hardsmythe thought it was important for me to know as soon as possible that we now have a magical medical manslaughter case on our hands." Hestia raised an eyebrow. "Clearly, you didn't think the same."

"I…" he had no idea how to respond to that.

"It is of no consequence," Hestia said matter-of-factly. "My priority now is to prepare for a completely different case, and an accelerated court date. Your priority, I assume…" she peered at him shrewdly, and Draco felt himself shrink several inches, "is to locate Miss Granger."

Draco cleared his throat. "Yes, ma'am."

"Off you go then," Hestia said briskly. "You won't find her here." She unlocked Hermione's office. "You can use her Floo."

* * *

Draco stepped out of the Floo in Hermione's flat with raised eyebrows. He had not expected to be allowed through given her customised settings. He must have been promoted. What did that mean?

"Hermione?" he called. No answer. Draco struggled to ignore the unsettled feeling in the pit of his gut. "Granger?"

"You won't find her here."

Draco spun to face the gravelly voice and found himself face to face with a figure that only bore the faintest of resemblances to Ron Weasley. His skin was sunken, his eyes heavily hooded and ringed with dark patches, and his disheveled hair progressed down his face into an equally disheveled beard.

"Weasley."

"Malfoy."

Silence.

"I'm looking for Granger," Draco said, somewhat unnecessarily, he felt. It wasn't as though he would voluntarily come looking for Weasley, and besides, he'd already made his intention very clear.

"You won't find her here," Weasley said again with a shrug and dragged his feet out of the room. Draco followed him, past two closed doors towards a bright bathroom at the end of the hallway. Ron shuffled in and closed the door in Draco's face.

"She's gone, she left," Weasley's voice echoed distortedly through the door.

 _Gone?_ "What do you mean?" he called, but rather than answer, Weasley made Draco spend a rather uncomfortable minute listening to him emptying his bladder. Draco scrunched up his nose in a way that would have made his mother publicly chide him. Where the hell was Hermione? That unsettled feeling in his gut intensified.

"I assumed she'd gone to you, to be honest," Weasley said suddenly over the sound of the toilet flushing.

"Why would you assume—" Draco's sentence was cut off as Ron abruptly opened the door and the pair were face-to-face.

"Aren't you two having some affair?" the redhead spat in his face. "Screwing like rabbits?"

Draco arched an eyebrow. "Who knew, the Weasel knows how to read! Too bad he can only manage trashy tabloids—"

His words were knocked out of him-literally-as Ron's fist connected with Draco's lower jaw.

"Don't… _push_ me, Malfoy," Weasley growled. "It's bad enough she left because of you. I don't need you in my face, as well."

Draco touched his jaw. It was tender but not the hardest punch he'd had-ironically that had been at Hermione's hand when she was just a teenager. "All this time you've been hitting Granger and you still haven't learned how to throw a punch? No? How about a lesson."

And in the same instant, he'd punched Ron Weasley in the gut with as much power as he could muster. The redhead doubled over, coughing and wheezing. He looked up at a smirking Malfoy, and before he knew it, Draco was being wrestled to the ground, Weasley's arms around his waist and his shoulder in his ribs. The pair tumbled to the ground, and Ron straddled Draco, pinning him down with his left arm, raising his right arm to strike. The first two hits missed Draco's face by millimetres as the blonde dodged, but the third caught him above the eyebrow and Draco's vision blurred momentarily. Before Weasley's arm came down to hit him once more, Draco wrenched his arm free to push him off, somewhat unsuccessfully, but dislodged him enough to get a hit into Ron's shoulder. That threw the other man off balance, and Draco managed to achieve his objective; pressing his wand into Weasley's ribs, and as expected, the redhead stilled.

"Get the hell off me, Weasley, or I will hex you into oblivion, Healing Oath be damned."

He felt air rush into his lungs as the weight of Weasley was lifted off his chest. Dusting off his robes, but still aiming his wand at Weasley, Draco stood up.

"That's what I thought," he said smoothly. "Since I'm here, I might as well tell you this. When I find Hermione, she will be returning here to collect her things before leaving for good. When she does that, you will not be here. And after that, you can have this place and you can fester in it, die here for all I care. But you will not - and this bit is important Weasley, so pay attention -" he shot a quick Stinging Hex into Ron's thigh and smirked at the yelp he made in response - "you will not speak to her. You will not write to her. You will not even breathe in her direction. She will cease to exist to you. Is that clear?"

Ron scoffed from the floor. "Do you really think you're better for her than I am?"

Another Stinging Hex. "Stop fucking doing that!"

"I asked: Is. That. Clear."

"Fine, whatever, have her. But you're not better for her. You're no-ouch! Fucking hell, stop doing that!"

"I'll stop once you realise she was never yours. She wasn't yours when you were giving her black eyes, or when she was sending you back to bed after your jealous fits, and she definitely isn't yours to give away to me or to anyone. I don't know exactly what happened to you two but I am pleased it's over, because it was really fucking tiring worrying about whether she'd come to work with a black eye or a broken wrist."

He shot one more Hex for good luck, then stepped back into the Floo for what felt like the thousandth time that day.

* * *

"Master Malfoy is home early!" his elf chirped at him, wringing her small knobbly hands as Draco entered his study. "Ribley has not prepared a lunch for Master Malfoy – oh! And Master Malfoy is bleeding-"

"Don't worry about it, Ribley. I shan't be here for long," Draco replied absently, circling his desk and picking up the post that had been left in front of where he would normally sit. He'd hoped to see a note from Hermione, but nothing in the pile was of interest.

"In that case, Master Malfoy, may Ribley deal with the beggar by the gates on Master's behalf?"

"Beggar?"

"Yes sir," Ribley said eagerly, rocking on the balls of her feet. "A young beggar girl, sat by the gates to Master Malfoy's manor. Sleeping by the gates, sir."

"Another one?" Draco sighed. This was happening all too often. The last one had hoped for a free meal. He really needed to work out a way to make the Manor Undetectable to magical folk, as well as Muggles. "No, Ribley, I'll sort it. I'm going to have to try and put some more Repelling Charms on the gates."

Opting to walk to the front gates rather than Apparate, Draco strode down the baronial hall, paying little attention to the portraits adorning its walls. He still didn't know where to look for Hermione next; he'd checked everywhere he could think of to no avail. Maybe she was with a friend? Come to think of it, who were her friends? Surely she wouldn't go to Potter, that would make her too accessible to Weasley. Maybe she had other colleagues? But wouldn't they be at work? He stepped out into the bright porch of the house and crunched across the gravel to the stone path which led to the tall wrought iron gates to the Manor. The sun broke through the thin clouds and beat down on the back of his neck; he was grateful for his white Healer robes, rather than his usual dark ones. There was still a slight breeze which ruffled through his hair and helped his head clear a little after the trauma of the day. He couldn't believe it was only lunchtime. Only two hours since they'd lost Lindi. Only four hours since he first saw the front page of the Prophet. He felt like he had been awake for days, not mere hours.

And despite his best efforts, he still hadn't found Hermione. He hadn't been able to make sure she was safe after that newspaper was printed. He should have searched the flat, made sure that Weasley hadn't stashed her in a room, bruised or worse...

He almost Apparated on the spot to head back to Granger's flat and turn it upside down, but forced himself to take a deep breath. "One thing at a time, Malfoy."

Getting closer to the gate now, he could see the beggar that his elf had told him about. It looked like a mound of brown sacking material, and as he got closer he realised the top of the mound was actually hair. Brown, fluffy hair sticking out in all directions, with odd golden strands sparkling in the sunlight. Hair he knew all too well.

He started to run towards the gate.

Seconds, which felt like minutes, later, he wrenched open the gates with a flick of his wand, and the tiny mound of fabric toppled through onto the path and woke with a start.

Draco took one look down into the tear-stained face of the woman he'd spent all morning looking for, one look into her puffy eyes as she squinted back up at him, and scooped her up onto his arms in one fluid movement.

"Come on, Granger. It's about time I found you."

* * *

 **A/N:** A chapter in which Draco does a lot of Flooing haha. Thanks for hanging in there! And as ever thanks to my beta **hogsmeadeshoneyduchess** for her wisdom, encouragement and keen eye for stray punctuation! Please review :)


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